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MANNEKS 



AND 



SOCIAL USAGES 



By MRS. JOHN SHERWOOD 

AUTHOR OF "A TRANSPLANTED ROSE" 



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1 Manners are the shadows of great virtues. ''— "Whatelet 
♦'Solid Fashion is funded politeness.''— -Emerson 













NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

18 84 



I S 



Entered according to-Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by 

HARPER & BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



AH rights reserved. 



PREFACE. 



These is no country where there are so many 
people asking what is "proper to do," or, indeed, 
where there are so many genuinely anxious to do 
the proper thing, as in the vast conglomerate which 
we call the United States of America. The new- 
ness of our country is perpetually renewed by the 
sudden making of fortunes, and by the absence of 
a hereditary, reigning set. There is no aristocracy 
here which has the right and title to set the fash- 
ions. 

But a "reigning set," whether it depend upon 
hereditary right or adventitious wealth, if it be pos- 
sessed of a desire to lead and a disposition to hospi- 
tality, becomes for a period the dictator of fashion 
to a large number of lookers-on. The travelling 
world, living far from great centres, goes to New- 
port, Saratoga, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, 
Boston, and gazes on what is called the latest Amer- 
ican fashion. This, though exploited by what we 
may call for the sake of distinction the " newer set/' 
is influenced and shaped in some degree by people 
of native refinement and taste, and that wide ex- 



4 PREFACE. 

perience which is gained by travel and association 
with broad and cultivated minds. They counteract 
the tendency to vulgarity, which is the great danger 
of a newly launched society, so that our social con- 
dition improves, rather than retrogrades, with every 
decade. 

There may be many social purists who w r ill dis- 
agree with us in this statement. Men and women 
educated in the creeds of the Old World, with the 
good blood of a long ancestry of quiet ladies and 
gentlemen, find modern American society, particu- 
larly in New York and at Newport, fast, furious, 
and vulgar. There are, of course, excesses com- 
mitted everywhere in the name of fashion ; but w r e 
cannot see that they are peculiar to America. We 
can only answer that the creed of fashion is one of 
perpetual change. There is a Council of Trent, we 
may say, every five years, perhaps even every two 
years, in our new and changeful country, and we 
learn that, follow as we may either the grand old 
etiquette of England or the more gay and shifting 
social code of France, w r e still must make an original 
etiquette of our own. Our political system alone, 
where the lowest may rise to the highest preferment, 
upsets in a measure all that the Old World insists 
upon in matters of precedence and formality. Cer- 
tain immutable principles remain common to all 
elegant people who assume to gather society about 
them, and who wish to enter its portals; the absent- 
minded scholar from his library should not ignore 



PREFACE. O 

them, the fresh young fanner from the country- 
side feels and recognizes their importance. If we 
are to live together in unity we must make society 
a pleasant thing, we must obey certain formal rules, 
and these rules must conform to the fashion of the 
period. 

And it is in no way derogatory to a new country 
like our own if on some minor points of etiquette 
we presume to differ from the older world. We 
must fit our garments to the climate, our manners 
to our fortunes and to our daily lives. There are, 
however, faults and inelegancies of which foreigners 
accuse us which we may do well to consider. One 
of these is the greater freedom allowed in the 
manners of our young women — a freedom which, 
as our New World fills up with people of foreign 
birth, cannot but lead to social disturbances. Other 
national faults, which English writers and critics 
kindly point out, are our bumptiousness, our spread- 
eagleism, and our too great familiarity and lack of 
dignity, etc. 

Instead of growing angry over these criticisms, 
perhaps we might as well look into the matter dis- 
passionately, and see if we cannot turn the advice in 
some degree to our advantage. We can, however, 
decide for ourselves on certain points of etiquette 
which we borrow from nobody; they are a part of 
our great nation, of our republican institutions, and 
of that continental hospitality which gives a home 
to the Rnss, the German, the Frenchman, the Irish- 



6 PREFACE. 

man, and the "heathen Chinee." A somewhat wide 
and elastic code, as boundless as the prairies, can 
alone meet the needs of these different citizens. 
The old traditions of stately manners, so common 
to the Washington and Jefferson days, have almost 
died out here, as similar manners have died out all 
over the world. The war of 1861 swept away what 
little was left of that once important American fact 
— a grandfather. We began all over again ; and 
now there comes up from this newer world a flood 
of questions : How shall we manage all this ? How 
shall we use a fork ? When wear a dress-coat ? How 
and when and on whom shall we leave our cards? 
How r long and for whom shall w 7 e wear mourning? 
What is the etiquette of a wedding? How shall 
we give a dinner-party? The young house-keeper 
of Kansas w T rites as to the manners she shall teach to 
her children ; the miner's wife, having become rich, 
asks how she shall arrange her house, call on her 
neighbors, write her letters? Many an anxious girl 
writes as to the propriety of "driving out with a 
gentleman," etc. In fact, there is one great univer- 
sal question, What is the etiquette of good society? 
Not a few people have tried to answer these 
questions, and have broken down in the attempt. 
Many have made valuable manuals, as far as they 
went; but writers on etiquette commonly fail, for 
one or two different reasons. Many attempt to 
write who know nothing of good society by ex- 
perience, and their books are full of ludicrous errors. 



PREFACE. 

Others have had the disadvantage of knowing I 
much, of ignoring the beginning of thin. ap- 

posing that the person who reads will take much 
for granted. Tor a person who has an intuitive 
knowledge of etiquette, who has been brought up 
from his mother's knee in the best society, has al- 
ways known what to do. how to dress, to whom to 
bow. to write in the simplest way about etiquette 
would be impossible; he would never know how 
little the reader, to whose edification he was ad- 
dressing himself, knew of the matter. 

If. however, an anxious inqnirer should write and 
ask if '-'mashed potato must be eaten with a kni 
or a fork." or if " napkins and finger-bowls can be 
used at breakfast," those questions he can answer. 

It is with an effort to answer thousands of these 
questions, written in good faith to Harpers Bazar^ 
that this book is undertaken. The simplicity, the 
directness, and the evident desire "to improve/ 3 
which characterize these anonymous letters, are all 
much to be commended. Many people have found 
themselves suddenly conquerors of material wealth, 
the most successful colonists in the world, the heirs 
of a great inheritance, the builders of a new empire. 
There is a true refinement manifested in their ques- 
tions. Xot only do men and women like to behave 
properly themselves, but all desire to know what is 
hool of manners, that they may educate 
their children therein. Such minds are the I 
conservators of law and order. It is not a commu- 



$ PREFACE. 

nistic spirit that asks, " How can I do this thing in a 
better way ?" it is that wise and liberal conservatism 
which includes reverence for law, respect for age, 
belief in religion, and a desire for a refined society. 
A book on etiquette, however patiently considered 
and honestly written, must have many shortcomings, 
and contain disputed testimony. All we can do is 
endeavor to mention those fashions and customs 
which we believe to be the best, remembering always, 
as w r e have said, that the great law of change goes on 
forever — that our stately grandfathers had fashions 
which we should now consider gross and unbecom- 
ing, while we have customs, particularly of speech, 
which would have shocked them. This law of 
change is not only one which time modifies, but 
with us the South, the North, the East, and the West 
differ as to certain points of etiquette. All, how- 
ever, agree in saying that there is a good society in 
America whose mandates are supreme. All feel 
that the well-bred man or woman is a "recognized 
institution." Everybody laughed at the mistakes of 
Daisy Miller, and saw wherein she and her mother 
were wrong. Independent American girls may still 
choose to travel without a chaperon, but they must 
be prepared to fight a well-founded prejudice if they 
do. There is a recognition of the necessity of good 
manners, and a profound conviction, let us hope, 
that a graceful manner is the outcropping of a well- 
regulated mind and of a good heart. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. pagk 
Wo:mex as Leaders 13 

CHAPTER II. 
Good and Bad Society 23 

CHAPTER III. 
Ox Introducing People 30 

CHAPTER IY. 
Visiting 50 

CHAPTER Y. 
Invitations, Acceptances, and Regrets 58 

CHAPTER YI. 
The Etiquette of Weddings 63 

CHAPTER VII. 
Before the Weddixg and After 7S 

CHAPTER YIII. 
Gold, Silver, and Tin Weddings 96 



10 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. PAGE 

The Etiquette of Balls „ . 95 

CHAPTER X. 
Letteks and Letter- writing 103 

CHAPTER XI. 
Incongruities of Dress Ill 

CHAPTER XII. 
Dressing for Driving 118 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Etiquette of Mourning 125 

CHAPTER XIY. 
Letters of Condolence 137 

CHAPTER XY. 
Chaperons and their Duties 144 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Etiquette for Elderly Girls 153 

CHAPTER XVII. 
New-year's Calls 160 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Matinees and Soirees 169 

CHAPTER XIX. 

The Modern Dinner-table 177 



CONTENTS. 11 

CHAPTER XX. r.GE 

Laying the Dinner-table 185 

CHAPTER XXI. 
Favobs and Boneonnieres 193 

CHAPTER XXII. 
Floral Tributes and Decorations 201 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

GaRDEN-P ARTIES 208 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
Supper-parties 215 

CHAPTER XXV. 
Summer DdoT?..- 022 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
Luncheons. Informal and Social 230 

CHAPTER XXVIL 
TnE Fork and the Spoon 237 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
Napkins and Taele-cloths 2-12 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
Servants, tiielr Dress and Duties 249 

CHAPTER XXX. 
The House with One Servant 



1 2 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXXI. PAGE 

The House with Two Servants 264 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

The House with Many Servants . 272 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 
Manners. — A Study for the Awkward and the Shy 279 

CHAPTER XXXIY. 
How to Treat a Guest 286 

CHAPTER XXXV. 
Certain Questions Answered 293 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 
The Manners op the Past 300 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 
The Manners of the Optimist 310 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
The Manners of the Sympathetic 817 



MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER I. 

WOMEN AS LEADEES. 



Nothing strikes the foreigner so much (since the 
days of De Tocqueville, the first to mention it) as the 
prominent position of woman in the best society of 
America. She has almost no position in the political 
world. She is not a leader, an intrigante in politics, 
as she is in France. We have no Madame de Stael, 
no Princess Belgioso, here to make and unmake our 
Presidents; but women do all the social work, which 
in Europe is done not only by women, but by young- 
bachelors and old ones, statesmen, princes, ambassa- 
dors, and attaches. Officials are connected with every 
Court whose business it is to visit, write and answer 
invitations, leave cards, call, and perform all the 
multifarious duties of the social world. 

In America, the lady of the house does all this. 
Her men are all in business or in pleasure, her sons 
are at work or off yachting. They .cannot spend time 
to make their dinner calls — "Mamma, please leave 
my cards " is the legend written on their banners. 

Thus to women, as the conductors of social poll- 



14 MANNEBS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

tics, is committed the card — that pasteboard protocol, 
whose laws are well defined in every land but our 
own. 

Now, in ten different books on etiquette w T hich we 
have consulted we find ten different opinions upon the 
subject of first calls, as between two women. We can- 
not, therefore, presume to decide where so many doc- 
tors disagree, but give the commonly received opin- 
ions as expressed by the customs of New York society. 

When should a lady call first upon a new and a 
desirable acquaintance? Not hastily. She should 
have met the new and desirable acquaintance, should 
have been properly introduced, should feel sure that 
her acquaintance is desired. The oldest resident, the 
one most prominent in fashion, should call first ; but, 
if there is no such distinction, two women need not 
forever stand at bay each waiting for the other to 
call. A very admirable and polite expedient has 
been substituted for a first call — in the sending out 
of cards, for several days in the month, by a lady 
who wishes to begin her social life, we will say, in 
a new city. These may or may not be accompanied 
by the card of some well-known friend. If these 
cards bring the desired visits or the cards of the 
desired guests, the beginner may feel that she has 
started on her society career with no loss of self- 
respect. Those who do not respond are generally 
in a minority. Too much haste in making new ac- 
quaintances, however — "pushing," as it is called — 
cannot be too much deprecated. 

First calls should be returned within a week. If a 
lady is invited to any entertainment by a new ac- 



FIRST CALLS. 15 

quaintance, whether the invitation come through a 
friend or not, she should immediately leave cards, and 
send either a regret or an acceptance. To lose time in 
this matter is a great rudeness. Whether she attend 
the entertainment or not, she should call after it within a 
week. Then, having done all that is polite, and having 
shown herself a woman of good-breeding, she can keep 
up the acquaintance or not as she pleases. Sometimes 
there are reasons why a lady does not wish to keep up 
the acquaintance, but she must not, for her own sake, 
be oblivious to the politeness extended. Some very 
rude people in Xew York have sent back invitations, 
or failed to recognize the first attempt at civility, 
saying, "We don't know the people." This is not 
the way to discourage unpleasant familiarity. In Xew 
York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and in the large cities 
of the West, and generally in the country towns, res- 
idents call first upon new-comers ; but in Washington 
this custom is reversed, and the new-comer calls first 
upon the resident. Every one — officials of the high- 
est down to the lowest grade — returns these cards. 
The visitor generally finds himself invited to the re- 
ceptions of the President and his Cabinet, etc. This 
arrangement is so convenient that it is a thousand 
pities it does not go into operation all over the coun- 
try, particularly in those large cities where the resi- 
dent cannot know if her dearest friend be in town 
unless informed in some such way of the fact. 

This does not, as might be supposed, expose society 
to the intrusion of unwelcome visitors. Tact, which 
is the only guide through the mazes of society, will 
enable a woman to avoid anything like an unwelcome 



16 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

intimacy or a doubtful acquaintance, even if such a 
person should "call first." 

Now the question conies up, and here doctors dis- 
agree : When may a lady call by proxy, or v» 7 hen may 
she send her card, or when must she call in person ? 

After a dinner-party a guest must call in person and 
inquire if the hostess is at home. For other enter- 
tainments it is allowed, in New York, that the lady 
call by proxy, or that she simply send her card. In 
sending to inquire for a person's health, cards may be 
sent by a servant, with a kindly message. 

No first visit should, however, be returned by card 
only; this w^ould be considered a slight, unless fol- 
lowed by an invitation. The size of New York, the 
great distances, the busy life of a woman of char- 
ities, large family, and immense circle of acquaint- 
ances may render a personal visit almost impossible. 
She may be considered to have done her duty if she 
in her turn asks her new acquaintance to call on her 
on a specified day, if she is not herself able to call. 

Bachelors should leave cards (if they ever leave 
any) on the master and mistress of the house, and, in 
America, upon the young ladies. A gentleman does 
not turn down the corners of his card — indeed, that 
fashion has become almost obsolete, except, perhaps, 
where a lady wishes it distinctly understood that she 
has called in person. The plainer the card the better. 
A small, thin card for a gentleman, not glazed, with 
his name in small script and his address well engraved 
in the corner, is in good taste. A lady's card should 
be larger, but not glazed or ornamented in any way. 
It is a rule with sticklers for good-breeding that after 



FOREIGN ETIQUETTE. 17 

any entertainment a gentleman should leave his card 
in person, although, as we have said, he often commits 
it to some feminine agency. 

No gentleman should call on a lady unless she asks 
him to do so, or unless he brings a letter of introduc- 
tion, or unless he is taken by a lady who is sufficiently 
intimate to invite him to call. A lady should say to 
a gentleman, if she wishes him to call, "I hope that 
we shall see you," or, " I am at home on Monday," or 
something of that sort. If he receives an invitation 
to dinner or to a ball from a stranger, he is bound to 
send an immediate answer, call the very next day, leave 
his card, and then to call after the entertainment. 

This, at least, is foreign etiquette, and we cannot do 
better than import it. This rule holds good for the 
entertainments of bachelors, who should leave their 
cards on each other after an entertainment, unless the 
intimacy is so great that no card-leaving is expected. 

When a lady returns to town, after an absence in 
Europe or in the country, it is strict etiquette that she 
should leave cards on all her acquaintances and friends 
if she expects to entertain or to lead a gay, social win- 
ter; but as distances in our great cities are formidable, 
as all ladies do not keep a carriage, as most ladies 
have a great deal else to do besides making visits, this 
long and troublesome process is sometimes simplified 
by giving a tea or a series of teas, which enables the 
lady, by staying at home on one evening of a week, 
or two or three afternoons of a month, to send out 
her cards to that effect, and to thus show her friends 
that she at least remembers them. As society and 
card-leaving thus become rapidly complicated, a lady 

2 



18 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

should have a visiting- book, into which her list is 
carefully copied, with spaces for days and future 
engagements. 

A servant must be taught to receive the cards at 
the door, remember messages, and recollect for whom 
they are left, as it is not proper in calling upon Mrs. 
Brown at a private house to write her name on your 
card. At a crowded hotel this may be allowed, but 
it is not etiquette in visiting at private houses. In 
returning visits, observe the exact etiquette of the 
person who has left the first card. A call must not 
be returned with a card only, or a card by a call. If 
a person send you a card by post, return a card by 
post ; if a personal visit is made, return it by a per- 
sonal visit; if your acquaintance leave cards only, 
without inquiring if you are at home, return the 
same courtesy. If she has left the cards of the 
gentlemen of her family, return those of the gen- 
tlemen of your family. 

A young lady's card should almost always be ac- 
companied by that of her mother or her chaperon. 
It is well, on her entrance into society, that the name 
of the young lady be engraved on her mother's card. 
After she has been out a year, she may leave her own 
card only. Here American etiquette begins to differ 
from English etiquette. In London, on the other 
hand, no young lady leaves her card : if she is moth- 
erless, her name is engraved beneath the name of her 
father, and the card of her chaperon is left with both 
until she becomes a maiden lady of somewhat mature 
if uncertain age. 

It is rare now to see the names of both husband 



VISITING-CARDS. 1 9 

and wife engraved on one card, as "Mr. and Mrs. 
Brown." The lady has her own card, "Mrs. Octa- 
vius Brown," or with the addition, "The Misses 
Brown." Her husband has his separate card; each 
of the sons has his own card. JSTo titles are used on 
visiting-cards in America, save military, naval, or 
judicial ones; and, indeed, many of our most dis- 
tinguished judges have had cards printed simply 
with the name, without prefix or affix. "Mr. Web- 
ster," "Mr. Winthrop," "Henry Clay" are well- 
known instances of simplicity. But a woman must 
always use the prefix "Mrs." or "Miss." A gentle- 
man may or may not use the prefix "Mr.," as he 
pleases, but women must treat themselves with more 
respect. Ko card is less proper than one which is 
boldly engraved " Gertrude F. Brown ;" it should be 
"Miss Gertrude F. Brown." 

A married lady always bears her husband's name, 
during his life, on her card. Some discussion is now 
going on as to whether she should continue to call 
herself "Mrs. Octavius Brown" or "Mrs. Mary 
Brown" after his death. The burden of opinion is 
in favor of the latter — particularly as a son may 
bear his father's name, so there will be two Mrs. 
Octavius Browns. No lady wishes to be known as 
" old Mrs. Octavius Brown," and as we do not use the 
convenient title of Dowager, we may as well take 
the alternative of the Christian name. We cannot 
Bay "Mrs. Octavius Brown, Jr., if the husband lias 
ceased to be a junior. Many married ladies hesitate 
to discard the name by which they have always 
been known. Perhaps the simple "Mrs. Brown" 



20 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

the best, after all. No lady should leave cards upon 
an unmarried gentleman, except in the case of his 
having given entertainments at which ladies were 
present. Then the lady of the house should drive to 
his door with the cards of herself and family, allow- 
ing the footman to leave them. 

The young ladies' names, in such a case as this, 
should be engraven on their mother's card. 

"We have no leisure class," as Henry James says 
in his brilliant " International Episode ;" but still 
young men should try to make time to call on those 
who entertain them, showing by some sort of person- 
al attention their gratitude for the politeness shown 
them. American young men are, as a rule, very re- 
miss about this matter of calling on the hostess whose 
hospitality they accept. 

A gentleman should not call on a young lady with- 
out asking for her mother or her chaperon. Nor 
should he leave cards for her alone, but always leave 
one for her mother. 

Ladies can, and often do, write informal invitations 
on the visiting-card. To teas, readings, and small 
parties, may be added the day of reception. It is 
convenient and proper to send these cards by post. 
Everything can be sent by post now, except an in- 
vitation to dinner, and that must always be sent by 
private hand, and an answer must be immediately 
returned in the same formal manner. 

After balls, amateur concerts, theatrical parties, 
garden-parties, or "at homes," cards should be left 
by all invited guests within a week after the invi- 
tation, particularly if the invited guest has been 



"WHEN LSYITED TO A TEA." 21 

obliged to decline, These cards may be left without 
inquiring for the hostess, if time presses; but it is 
more polite to inquire for the hostess, even if it is 
not her day. If it is her reception day, it would be 
rude not to inquire, enter, and pay a personal visit. 
After a dinner, one must inquire for the hostess and 
pay a personal visit. It is necessary to mention this 
fact, because so many ladies have got into the habit 
(having large acquaintances) of leaving or sending 
cards in by a footman, without inquiring for the host- 
ess (who is generally not at home), that there has 
grown up a confusion, which leads to offence being 
taken where none is meant. 

It is not considered necessary to leave cards after 
a tea. A lady leaves her cards as she enters the 
hall, pays her visit, and the etiquette of a visiting 
acquaintance is thus established for a year. She 
should, however, give a tea herself, asking all her 
entertainers. 

If a lady has been invited to a tea or other enter- 
tainment through a friend without having known 
her hostess, she is bound to call soon ; but if the in- 
vitation is not followed up by a return card or an- 
other invitation, she must understand that the ac- 
quaintance is at an end. She may, however, invite 
her new friend, within a reasonable time, to some 
entertainment at her own house, and if that is ac- 
cepted, the acquaintance goes on. It is soon ascer- 
tained by a young woman who begins life in a new 
city whether her new friends intend to be friendly 
or the reverse. A resident of a town or village can 
call, with propriety, on any new-comer. The new- 



22 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

comer must return this call ; but, if she does not 
desire a further acquaintance, this can be the end of 
it. The time of calling must in every town be set- 
tled by the habits of the place; after two o'clock and 
before six is, however, generally safe. 

In England they have a pleasant fashion of calling 
to inquire for invalids or afflicted friends, and of 
pencilling the words " kind inquiries." It has not ob- 
tained that popularity in America which it deserves, 
and it would be well to introduce it. If a lady call on 
a person who is a stranger to her, and if she has diffi- 
culty in impressing her name on the servant, she send^3 
up her card, while she waits to see if the lady will re- 
ceive her. But she must never on any occasion hand 
her own card to her hostess. If she enters the parlor 
and finds her hostess there, she must introduce her- 
self by pronouncing her own name distinctly. If she 
is acquainted with the lady, she simply gives her name 
to the servant, and does not send up her card. 

Wedding- cards have great prominence in America, 
but we ignore those elaborate funeral - cards and 
christening - cards, and printed cards with announce- 
ments of engagements, and many other cards fash- 
ionable abroad. With us the cards of the bride 
and her parents, and sometimes of the fiance, are 
sent to all friends before the wedding, and those of 
the invitation to the wedding to a few only, it may 
be, or to all, as the family desire. After the marriage, 
the cards of the married pair, with their address, are 
sent to all whose acquaintance is desired. 

Husbands and wives rarely call together in America, 
although there is no law against their doing so. It 



- 

is unusual because, as we have said, we have no 

isure class.' 1 Gentlemen are privileged to call on 
Sunday, after church, and on Sunday evenings. A 
mother and daughter should call : _ the 

mother is an invalid. ighter can call, leaving 

her mother'- card. 

"Not at home' 5 is a proper form" s are 

: receiving : nor does it involve a falsehood. It 
merely means that the lady is not at home to com- 
pany. The servant should also add. %, 3Irs. Brown 
receives on Tuesdays." if the lady has a day. W< 
not ladies able to deny themselves to callers th( 
would be no time in crowded cities for any sort of 
work, or rej - -. r leisure for self-improvement. F :\ 
with the many idle people who seek to rid themselves 
un and penalty of their own vapid society 
by calling and making somebody else entertain them, 
with the wandering t ;ok-agents and beggars, or with 
even the overflow of s: 3iety 3 a lady would find her 
existence muddled away by the | i «t and most ab- 
ject of occupations — that of receiving a number of in- 
considerate, and perhaps impertinent, wasters of time. 

It is well for all hons i-ke | *ra 1 " ote one day in 

the week to the reception of visitors — the morning 

to :. i and those who may wish to see her 

. and th uoon to those who call b - 

cially. It saves her time and simplifies matters. 

thing is mor tr than that a caller should 

; the servant where his mistress is, when she went 
ben she will be in. how soon she will be down, 

. All that a well-bi ant should say to such 

is is, "I know, madam. 91 



/ 



24 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

A mistress should inform her servant after break- 
fast ivhat he is to say to all comers. It is very offen- 
sive to a visitor to be let in, and then be told that she 
cannot see the lady of the house. She feels person- 
ally insulted, and as if, had she been some other per- 
son, the lady of the house would perhaps have seen her. 

If a servant, evidently ignorant and uncertain of 
his mistress and her wishes, says, "I will see if Mrs. 
Brown will see you," and ushers you into the par- 
lor, it is only proper to go in and wait. But it is 
always well to say, "If Mrs. Brown is going out, 
is dressing, or is otherwise engaged, ask her not to 
trouble herself to come down." Mrs. Brown will 
be very much obliged to you. In calling on a friend 
who is staying with people with w T hom you are not 
acquainted, always leave a card for the lady of the 
house. The lack of this attention is severely felt 
by new people who may entertain a fashionable 
woman as their guest — one who receives many calls 
from those w^ho do not know her hostess. It is nev- 
er proper to call on a guest without asking for the 
hostess. 

Again, if the hostess be a very fashionable woman, 
and the visitor decidedly not so, it is equally vulgar 
to make one's friend who may be a guest in the house 
a sort of entering wedge for an acquaintance ; a card 
should be left, but unaccompanied by any request to 
see the lady of the house. This every lady will at 
once understand. A lady who has a guest staying 
with her who receives many calls should always try 
to place a parlor at her disposal where she can see 
her friends alone, unless she be a very young per- 



EUROPEAN CUSTOMS. 

son, to whom the chaperonage of the hostess is in- 
dispensable. 

If the lady of the house is in the drawing-room 
when the visitor arrives to call on her guest, she is, 
of course, introduced and says a few words ; and if 
she is not in the room, the guest should inquire of the 
visitor if the lady of the house will see him or her, 
thus giving her a chance to accept or decline. 

In calling on the sons or the daughters of the house, 
every visitor should leave a card for the father and 
mother. If ladies are at home, cards should be left 
for the gentlemen of the family. 

In Europe a young man is not allowed to ask for 
the young ladies of the house in formal parlance, 
nor is he allowed to leave a card on them — socially 
in Europe the " jeune file," has no existence. He cal - 
on the mother or chaperon ; the young lady may be 
sent for, but he must not inquire for her first. Even 
if she is a young lady at the head of a house, he is 
not allowed to call upon her without some prelimina- 
ries ; some amiable female friend must manage to 
bring them together. 

In America the other extreme has led to a very vi- 
cious system of etiquette, by which young ladies are 
recognized as altogether leaders of society, receiving 
the guests and pushing their mothers into the back- 
ground. It would amaze a large number of ambi- 
tious young ladies to be told that it was not proper 
that young men should call on them and be r 
by them alone. But the solution would - 
that the mother or chaperon should advance to her 
proper place in this country, and while taking care of 



20 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

her daughter, appearing with her in public, and re- 
ceiving visits with her, still permit that good-natured 
and well-intended social intercourse between young 
men and women which is so seldom abused, and 
which has led to so many happy marriages. It is one 
of the points yet debatable how much liberty should 
be allowed young ladies. Certainly, however, we do 
not wish to hold our young girls up to the scorn and 
ridicule of the novelist or the foreign critic by ig- 
noring what has been a recognized tenet of good 
manners since society was formed. The fact that the 
chaperon is a necessary institution, and that to mar- 
ried ladies and to elderly ladies should be paid all due 
respect, is a subject of which w T e shall treat later. No 
young lady who is visiting in a strange city or coun- 
try town should ever receive the visits of gentlemen 
without asking her hostess and her daughters to come 
down and be introduced to them ; nor should she ever 
invite such persons to call without asking her hostess 
if it would be agreeable. To receive an ordinary ac- 
quaintance at any hour, even that of the afternoon 
reception, without her hostess would be very bad 
manners. We fear the practice is too common, how- 
ever. How much w T orse to receive a lover, or a gen- 
tleman who may aspire to the honor of becoming one, 
at unusual hours, without saying anything to the lady 
of the house ! Too many young American girls are 
in the habit of doing so : making of their friend's 
house a convenience by which an acquaintance with a 
young man may be carried on — a young man too, per- 
haps, who has been forbidden her own home. 

A bride receives her callers after she has settled 



PLAIN CARDS THE BEST. 2/ 

down in her married home just as any lady does. 
There is no particular etiquette observed. She sends 
out cards for two or three reception days, and her 
friends and new acquaintances call or send cards on 
these days. She must not, however, call on her friends 
until they have called upon her. 

As many of these callers — friends, perhaps, of the 
bridegroom — are unknown to the bride, it is well to 
have a servant announce the names; and they should 
also leave their cards in the hall that she may be able 
to know where to return the visits. 

What has so far been said will serve to give a gen- 
eral idea of the card and its uses, and of the duties 
which it imposes upon different members of society. 
Farther on in this volume we will take up, in much 
more particular fashion, the matters only alluded to 
in this opening chapter. 

We may say that cards have changed less in the 
history of etiquette and fashion than anything else. 
They, the shifting pasteboards, are in style about 
what they were fifty — nay, a hundred — years ago. 

The plain, unglazed card w T ith fine engraved script 
cannot be improved upon. The passing fashion for 
engraved autographs, for old English, for German 
text, all these fashions have had but a brief hour. 
Nothing is in worse taste than for an American to 
put a coat-of-arms on his card. It only serves to 
make him ridiculous, 



28 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER II. 

GOOD AND BAD SOCIETY. 

Many of our correspondents ask us to define what 
is meant by the terms "good society" and "bad so- 
ciety." They say that they read in the newspapers 
of the " good society " in New York and Washington 
and Newport, and that it is a record of drunkenness, 
flirtation, bad manners and gossip, backbiting, di- 
vorce, and slander. They read that the fashionable 
people at popular resorts commit all sorts of vulgari- 
ties, such as talking aloud at the opera, and disturb- 
ing their neighbors; that young men go to a dinner, 
get drunk, and break glasses; and one ingenuous 
young girl remarks, "We do not call that good so- 
ciety in Atlanta." 

Such a letter might have been written to that 
careful chronicler of "good society" in the days of 
Charles II., old Pepys of courtly fame. The young 
maiden of Hertfordshire, far from the Court, might 
well have thought of Rochester and such "gay 
sparks," and the ladies who threw glasses of wine at 
them, as not altogether well-bred, nor entitled to ad- 
mission into "good society." We cannot blame her. 

It is the old story. Where, too, as in our land, 
pleasure and luxury rule a certain set who enjoy no 
tradition of good manners, the contradiction in terms 



AREOGAXCE OF FASHION. 29 

is the more apparent. Even the external forms of re- 
spect to good manners are wanting. Xo such overt 
vulgarity, for instance, as talking aloud at the opera 
will ever be endured in London, because a powerful 
class of really well-born and well-bred people will hiss 
it down, and insist on the quiet which music, of all 
other things, demands. That is what we mean by a 
tradition of good manners. 

In humbler society, we may say as in the household 
of a Scotch peasant, such as was the father of Carlyle, 
the breaches of manners which are often seen in fash- 
ionable society would never occur. They would ap- 
pear perfectly impossible to a person who had a really 
good heart and a gentle nature. The manners of a 
young man of fashion who keeps his hat on when 
speaking to a lady, who would smoke in her face, and 
would appear indifferent to her comfort at a supper- 
table, who would be contradictory and neglectful — 
such manners would have been impossible to Thomas 
or John Carlyle, reared as they were in the humblest 
poverty. It was the " London swell" who dared to 
be rude in their day as now. 

But this impertinence and arrogance of fashion 
should not prevent the son of a Scotch peasant from 
acquiring, or attempting to acquire, the conventional 
habits and manners of a gentleman. If he have al- 
ready the grace of high culture, he should seek to 
add to it the knowledge of social laws, which will 
render him an agreeable person to be met in society. 
He must learn how to write a graceful note, and to 
answer his invitations promptly; he must learn the 
etiquette of dress and of leaving cards; he must learn 



SO MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES, 

how to eat his dinner gracefully, and, even if he sees 
in good society men of external polish guilty of a 
rudeness which would have shocked the man who in 
the Scotch Highlands fed and milked the cows, he 
still must not forget that society demands something 
which was not found in the farm-yard. Carlyle, him- 
self the greatest radical and democrat in the world, 
found that life at Graigenputtock would not do all 
for him, that he must go to London and Edinburgh 
to rub off his solitary neglect of manners, and strive 
to be like other people. On the other hand, the 
Queen of England has just refused to receive the 
Duke of Marlborough because he notoriously ill- 
treated the best of wives, and had been, in all his re- 
lations of life, what they call in England a "cad." 
She has even asked him to give back the Star and 
Garter, the insignia once worn by the great duke, 
which has never fallen on shoulders so unworthy as 
those of the late Marquis of Blandford, now Duke 
of M-arlborough. For all this the world has great 
reason to thank the Queen, for the present duke has 
been always in "good society," and such is the rev- 
erence felt for rank and for hereditary name in Eng- 
land that he might have continued in the most fash- 
ionable circles for all his bad behaviour, still being 
courted for name and title, had not the highest lady 
in the land rebuked him. 

She has refused to receive the friends of the Prince 
of Wales, particularly some of his American favorites, 
this good Queen, because she esteems good manners 
and a virtuous life as a part of good society. 

Now, those who are not " in society " are apt to mis- 



UTOPIA OF SOCIETY, 81 

take all that is excessive, all that is boorish, all that is 
snobbish, all that is aggressive, as being a part of that 
society. In this they are wrong. Xo one estimates 
the grandeur of the ocean by the rubbish thrown up 
on the shore. Fashionable society, good society, the 
best society, is composed of the very best people, the 
most polished and accomplished, religious, moral, and 
charitable. 

The higher the civilization, therefore, the better 
the society, it being always borne in mind that there 
will be found, here and there, the objectionable out- 
growths of a false luxury and of an insincere culture. 
Xo doubt, among the circles of the highest nobility, 
while the king and queen may be people of simple 
and unpretending manners, there may be some arro- 
gant and self-sufficient master of ceremonies, some 
Malvolio whose pomposity is in strange contrast to 
the good -breeding of Olivia. It is the lesser star 
which twinkles most. The " School for Scandal " is 
a lasting picture of the folly and frivolity of a cer- 
tain phase of London society in the past, and it re- 
peats itself in every decade. There is always a 
Mrs. Candour, a Sir Benjamin Backbite, and a scan- 
dalous college at Xewport. in Xew York, Milwau- 
kee, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Sar- 
atoga, Long Branch, wherever society congregates. 
It is the necessary imperfection, the seamy side. 
Such is the reverse of the pattern. Unfortunate- 
ly, the right side is not so easily described. The 
colors of a beautiful bit of brocade are, when seen 
as a whole, so judiciously blended that they can 
hardly be pronounced upon individually : one only 



32 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

admires the tout ensemble, and that uncritically, per- 
haps. 

That society is bad whose members, however tena- 
cious they be of forms of etiquette and elaborate cer- 
emonials, have one code of manners for those whom 
they deem their equals, and another for those whom 
they esteem to be of less importance to them by rea- 
son of age, pecuniary condition, or relative social in- 
fluence. Bad manners are apt to prove the concom- 
itant of a mind and disposition that are none too 
good, and the fashionable woman w T ho slights and 
wounds people because they cannot minister to her 
ambition, challenges a merciless criticism of her own 
moral shortcomings. A young girl who is imperti- 
nent or careless in her demeanor to her mother or 
her mother's friends; who goes about without a chap- 
eron and talks slang ; w r ho is careless in her bearing 
towards young men, permitting them to treat her as 
if she were one of themselves ; who accepts the at- 
tention of a young man of bad character or dissipated 
habits because he happens to be rich ; who is loud in 
dress and rough in manner — such a young girl is 
"bad society," be she the daughter of an earl or a 
butcher. There are many such instances of audacity 
in the so-called " good society " of America, but such 
people do not spoil it ; they simply isolate them- 
selves. 

A young man is "bad society" who is indifferent 
to those older than himself, who neglects to acknowl- 
edge invitations, who sits while a lady stands, w r ho 
goes to a ball and does not speak to his host, who 
is selfish, who is notoriously immoral and careless of 



"a pakyexue." 33 

his good name, and who throws discredit on his father 
and mother by showing his ill-breeding. Xo matter 
how rich, how externally agreeable to those whom he 
may wish to court, no matter how much varnish of 
outward manner such a man may possess, he is "bad 
society." 

A parvenue who assumes to keep other people out 
of the society which she has just conquered, whose 
thoughts are wholly upon social success (which means, 
with her, knowing somebody who has heretofore 
refused to know her), who is climbing, and throw- 
ing backward looks of disdain upon those who also 
climb — such a woman, unfortunately too common in 
America, is, when she happens to have achieved a 
fashionable position, one of the worst instances of 
bad society. She may be very prominent, powerful, 
and influential. She may have money and " enter- 
tain," and people desirous of being amused may court 
her, and her bad manners will be accepted by the 
careless observer as one of the concomitants of fash- 
ion. The reverse is true. She is an interloper in the 
circles of good society, and the old fable of the ass 
in the lion's skin fits her precisely. Many a duchess 
in England is such an interloper ; her supercilious 
airs betray the falsity of her politeness, but she is 
obliged by the rules of the Court at which she has 
been educated to "behave like a lady;" she has to 
counterfeit good-breeding ; she cannot, she dare not, 
behave as a woman who has suddenly become rich 
may sometimes, nay does, behave in American society, 
and still be received. 

It will thus be seen, as has been happily expresi 

3 



34 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

that "fashion has many classes, and many rules of 
probation and admission." A young person ignorant 
of its laws should not be deluded, however, by false 
appearances. If a young girl comes from the most 
secluded circles to Saratoga, and sees some handsome, 
well-dressed, conspicuous woman much courted, lion- 
ized, as it w r ere, and observes in her what seems to 
be insolent pretence, unkindness, frivolity, and super- 
ciliousness, let her inquire and wait before she accepts 
this bit of brass for pure gold. Emerson defines 
" sterling fashion as funded talent." Its objects may 
be frivolous or objectless; but, in the long-run, its 
purposes are neither frivolous nor accidental. It is 
an effort for good society; it is the bringing together 
of admirable men and women in a pleasant way. 
Good - breeding, personal superiority, beauty, genius, 
culture, are all very good things. Every one delights 
in a person of charming manners. Some people will 
forgive very great derelictions in a person w T ho has 
charming manners, but the truly good society is the 
society of those who have virtue and good manners 
both. 

Some Englishman asked an American, " What sort 
of a country is America?" "It is a country where 
everybody can tread on everybody's toes," was the 
answer. 

It is very bad society where any one wishes to 
tread on his neighbor's toes, and worse yet where 
there is a disposition to feel aggrieved, or to show 
that one feels aggrieved. There are certain people 
new in society who are always having their toes trod- 
den upon. They say : " Mrs. Brown snubbed me ; 



IMITATIONS OF GOOD SOCIETY. 35 

Mrs. Smith does not wish to know me; Mrs. Thomp- 
son ought to have invited me. I am as good as any 
of them." This is very bad society. No woman 
with self-respect will ever say such things. If one 
meets with rudeness, take no revenge, cast no asper- 
sions. Wit and tact, accomplishments and social tal- 
ents, may have elevated some woman to a higher pop- 
ularity than another, but no woman will gain that 
height by complaining. Command of temper, delicacy 
of feeling, and elegance of manner — all these are de- 
manded of the persons who become leaders of soci- 
ety, and would remain so. They alone are " good so- 
ciety." Their imitators may masquerade for a time, 
and tread on toes, and fling scorn and insult about 
them while in a false and insecure supremacy ; but 
such pretenders to the throne are soon unseated. 
There is a dreadful Sedan and Strasburg awaiting 
them. They distrust their own flatterers ; their " ap- 
panage " is not a solid one. 

People who are looking on at society from a dis- 
tance must remember that women of the world are 
not always worldly women. They forget that brill- 
iancy in society may be accompanied by the best 
heart and the sternest principle. The best people of 
the world are those who know the world best. They 
recognize the fact that this world should be known 
and served and treated with as much respect and sin- 
cerity as that other world, which is to be our reward 
for having conquered the one in which we live now. 



36 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER III. 

ON INTRODUCING PEOPLE. 

A lady in her own house can in these United States 
do pretty much as she pleases, but there is one thing 
in which our cultivated and exclusive city fashiona- 
ble society seems agreed, and that is, that she must 
not introduce two ladies who reside in the same tow r n. 
It is an aw^kward and an embarrassing restriction, par- 
ticularly as the other rule, which renders it easy enough 
— the English rule — that the " roof is an introduction," 
and that visitors can converse without further notice, 
is not understood. So awkward, however, are Amer- 
icans about this, that even in very good houses one 
lady has spoken to another, perhaps to a young girl, 
and has received no answer, "because she had not 
been introduced;" but this state of ignorance is, fortu- 
nately, not very common. It should be met by the 
surprised rejoinder of the Hoosier school-mistress : 
"Don't yer know enough to speak when yer spoken 
to?" Let every woman remember, whether she is 
from the backwoods, or from the most fashionable 
city house, that no such casual conversation can hurt 
her. It does not involve the further acquaintance 
of these two persons. They may cease to know each 
other when they go down the front steps; and it w r ould 
be kinder if they would both relieve the lady of the 



SNOBBISHNESS. 37 

house of their joint entertainment by joining in the 
conversation, or even speaking to each other. 

A hostess in this land is sometimes young, embar- 
rassed, and not fluent. The presence of two ladies with 
whom she is not very well acquainted herself, and 
both of whom she must entertain, presents a fearful 
dilemma. It is a kindness to her, which should out- 
weigh the dangers of making an acquaintance in " an- 
other set," if those ladies converse a little with each 
other. 

If one lady desires to be introduced to another, the 
hostess should ask if she may do so, of course unob- 
trusively. Sometimes this places one lady in an un- 
lucky position towards another. She does not know 
exactly what to do. Mrs. So-and-so may have the 
gift of exclusiveness, and may desire that Mrs. That- 
and-that shall not have the privilege of bowing to 
her. Gurowski says,. in hi3 very clever book on Amer- 
ica, that snobbishness is a peculiarity of the fashion- 
able set in America, because they do not know where 
they stand. It is the peculiarity of vulgar people 
everywhere, whether they sit on thrones or keep 
liquor-shops; snobs are born — not made, If, how* 
ever, a lady has this gift or this drawback of exclu- 
siveness, it is wrong to invade her privacy by intro- 
ducing people to her. 

Introducing should not be indiscriminately done 
either at home or in society by any lady, however 
kind-hearted. Her own position must be maintained, 
and that may demand a certain loyalty to her own set. 
She must be careful how she lets loose on society an 
undesirable or aggressive man, for instance, or a gr< 



38 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

bore, or a vulgar, irritating woman. These will all 
be social obstacles to the young ladies of her family, 
whom she must first consider. She must not add to 
the embarrassments of a lady who has already too 
large a visiting list. Unsolicited introductions are 
bad for both parties. Some large-hearted women 
of society are too generous by half in this way. A 
lady should by adroit questions find out how a new 
acquaintance would be received, whether or not it 
is the desire of both parties to know each other ; 
for, if there is the slightest doubt existing on this 
point, she will be blamed by both. It is often the 
good-natured desire of a sympathetic person that the 
people whom she knows well should know each other. 
She therefore strives to bring them together at lunch 
or dinner, but perhaps finds out afterwards that one 
of the ladies has particular objections to knowing 
the other, and she is not thanked. The disaffected 
lady shows her displeasure by being impolite to the 
pushing lady, as she may consider her. Had no in- 
troduction taken place, she argues, she might have 
still enjoyed a reputation for politeness. Wary wom- 
en of the world are therefore very shy of introducing 
two women to each other. 

This is the awkward side. The more agreeable 
and, we may say, humane side has its thousands and 
thousands of supporters, who believe that a friendly 
introduction hurts no one; but we are now not talk- 
ing of kindness, but of etiquette, which is decidedly 
opposed to indiscriminate introductions. 

Society is such a complicated organization, and its 
laws are so lamentably unwritten, yet so deeply en- 



MODE OF INTRODUCTION. 39 

graved on certain minds, that these things become im- 
portant to those who are always winding and unwind- 
ing the chains of fashion. 

It is therefore well to state it as a receivtd rule 
that no gentleman should ever be introduced to a lady 
unless her permission has been asked, and she be given 
an opportunity to refuse ; and that no woman should 
be introduced formally to another woman unless the 
introducer has consulted the wishes of both women. 
No delicate-minded person would ever intrude herself 
upon the notice of a person to whom she had been 
casually introduced in a friend's drawing-room ; but 
all the world, unfortunately, is not made up of del- 
icate-minded persons. 

In making an introduction, the gentleman is pre- 
sented to the lady with some such informal speech as 
this : " Mrs. A, allow me to present Mr. B ;" or, 
"Mrs. A, Mr. B desires the honor of knowing you." 
In introducing two women, present the younger to the 
older woman, the question of rank not holding good 
in our society where the position of the husband, be 
he judge, general, senator, or president even, does not 
give his wife fashionable position. She may be of far 
less importance in the great world of society than 
some Mrs. Smith, who, having nothing else, is set 
down as of the highest rank in that unpublished but 
well-known book of heraldry which is so thoroughly 
understood in America as a tradition. It is the proper 
thing for a gentleman to ask a mutual friend or an 
acquaintance to introduce him to a lady, and there 
are few occasions when this request is refused. In 
our crowded ballrooms, chaperons often ask young 



40 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

men if they will be introduced to their charges. It 
is better before asking the young men of this pres- 
ent luxurious age, if they will not only be introduced, 
but if they propose to dance, with the young lady, 
else that young person may be mortified by a snub. 
It is painful to record, as we must, that the age of 
chivalry is past, and that at a gay bail young men ap- 
pear as supremely selfish, and desire generally only 
introductions to the reigning belle, or to an heiress, 
not deigning to look at the humble wall-flower, who 
is neither, but whose womanhood should command 
respect. Ballroom introductions are supposed to 
mean, on the part of the gentleman, either an inten- 
tion to dance with the young lady, to walk with her, 
or to talk to her through one dance, or to show her 
some attention. 

Men scarcely ever ask to be introduced to each 
other, but if a lady, through some desire of her own, 
wishes to present them, she should never be met by 
indifference on their part. Men have a right to be 
exclusive as to their acquaintances, of course ; but at 
a lady's table, or in her parlor, they should never 
openly show distaste for each other's society before 
her. 

In America it is the fashion to shake hands, and 
most women, if desirous of being cordial, extend their 
hands even on a first introduction ; but it is, perhaps, 
more elegant to make a bow only, at a first introduc- 
tion. 

In her own house a hostess should always extend 
her hand to a person brought to her by a mutual 
friend, and introduced for the first time. 



ANGLO-SAXON ETIQUETTE. 41 

At a dinner-party, a few minutes before dinner, the 
hostess introduces to a lady the gentleman who is to 
take her down to the dining-room, but makes no fur- 
ther introductions, except in the case of a distin- 
guished stranger, to whom all the company are intro- 
duced. Here people, as we have said, are shy of 
speaking, but they should not be, for the room where 
they meet La a sufficient guarantee that they can con- 
se without any loss of dignity. 

At large gatherings in the country it is proper for 

the lady to introduce her guests to each other, and it 

rf :etly proper to do this without asking permission 

of either party. A mother always introduces her son 

or daughter, a husband his wife, or a wife her hus- 

nd, without asking permission. 

A gentleman, after being introduced to a lady, must 

it for her to bow first before he ventures to claim 
her as an acquaintance. 

This is Anglo-Saxon etiquette. On the Continent, 
however, the gentleman bows first. There the matter 
of the raising the hat is also important. An Ameri- 
can gentleman takes his hat quite off to a lady ; a 
foreigner raises it but slightly, and bows with a def- 
erential air. Between ladies but slightly acquainted, 

1 just introduced, a very formal bow is all that is 
proper ; acquaintances and friends bow and smil 
intimate male friends simply nod, but all gentler 

raise the hat and bow if the lady recog- 
nizes a friend. 

Introductions which take place out-of- is on 

the lawn-tennis ground, in the hunting field, in the 

vet, or in any casual way, are not to be taken 



42 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

necessarily formal, unless the lady chooses so to con- 
sider them. The same may be said of introductions 
at a watering-place, where a group of ladies walking 
together may meet other ladies or gentlemen, and join 
forces for a w^alk or drive. Introductions are needful, 
and should be made by the oldest lady of the party, 
but are not to be considered as making an acquaint- 
ance necessary between the parties if neither should 
afterwards wish it. It is universally conceded now 
that this sort of casual introduction does not involve 
either lady in the net-work of a future acquaintance ; 
nor need a lady recognize a gentleman, if she does not 
choose to do so, after a watering-place introduction. 
It is always, however, more polite to bow ; that civil- 
ity hurts no one. 

There are in our new country many women who 
consider themselves fashionable leaders — members of 
an exclusive set — and who fear if they should know 
some other women out of that set that they would im- 
peril their social standing. These people have no titles 
by which they can be known, so they preserve their 
exclusiveness by disagreeable manners, as one would 
hedge a garden by a border of prickly-pear. The 
result is that much ill-feeling is engendered in society, 
and people whom these old aristocrats call the "nou- 
veaux riches" "parvenus," etc., are always having their 
feelings hurt. The fact remains that the best-bred 
and most truly aristocratic people do not find it nec- 
essary to hurt any one's feelings. An introduction 
never harms anybody, and a woman with the slight- 
est tact can keep off a vulgar and a pushing person 
without being rude. It is to be feared that there 



DUTIES OF A HOSTESS. 43 

are vulgar natures among those who aspire to be con- 
sidered exclusive, and that they are gratified if they 
can presumably increase their own importance by 
seeming exclusive ; but it is not necessary to dwell- 
on such people. 

The place given here to the ill-bred is only con- 
ceded to them that one may realize the great demands 
made upon the tact and the good feeling of a hostess. 
She must have a quick apprehension : she may and 
will remember, however, that it is very easily for- 
given, this kind-heartedness — that it is better to sin 
against etiquette than to do an unkind thing. 

Great pains should be taken by a hostess to intro- 
duce shy people. Young people are those whose 
pleasure must depend on introductions. 

It is well for a lady in presenting two strangers to 
say something which may break the ice, and make 
the conversation easy and agreeable ; as, for instance, 
"Mrs. Smith, allow me to present Mr. Brown, who 
has just arrived from Xew Zealand ;" or, "Mrs. Jones, 
allow me to present Mrs. TTalsingham, of Washington 
— or San Francisco,'' so that the two may naturally 
have a question and answer ready with which to step 
over the threshold of conversation without tripping. 

At a five-ox-lock tea or a large reception there are 
reasons why a lady cannot introduce any one but the 
daughter or sister whom she has in charge. A lady 
who comes and knows no one sometimes goes away 
feeling that her hostess has been inattentive, because 
no one has spoken to her. She remembers Eur. 
where the roof -tree has been an introduction, and 
where people spoke kindly to her and did not pass 



44 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

her by. Dinner - parties in stiff and formal London 
have this great attraction : a gentleman steps up and 
speaks to a lady, although they have never met be- 
fore, and often takes her down to dinner without an 
introduction. The women chat after dinner like old 
friends ; every one knows that the roof is a sufficient 
guarantee. This is as it should be ; but great awk- 
wardness results in the United States if one lady 
speaks to another and receives no answer. "Pray, 
can you tell rne who the pianist is ?" said a leader of 
society to a young girl near her at a private concert. 
The young lady looked distressed and blushed, and 
did not answer. Having seen a deaf-mute in the 
room whom she knew, the speaker concluded that this 
young lady belonged to that class of persons, and was 
very much surprised when later the hostess brought 
up this silent personage and introduced her. 

"I could not speak to you before because I had 
not been introduced — but the pianist is Mr. Mills," 
remarked this punctilious person. " I, however, could 
speak to you, although we had not been formally 
presented. The roof was a sufficient guarantee of 
your respectability, and I thought from your not an- 
swering that you were deaf and dumb," said the lady. 

The rebuke was deserved. Common - sense must 
interpret etiquette; "nice customs courtesy to great 
kings." Society depends upon its social soothsayers 
for all that is good in it. A disagreeable woman can 
always find precedents for being formal and chilling; 
a fine -tempered woman can always find reasons 
enough for being agreeable. A woman would rather 
be a benediction than a curse, one would think. 



CARE IN PRESENTING FOREIGNERS. 45 

We hold it proper, all things considered, that at 
dinner-parties and receptions a hostess may introduce 
her friends to each other. So long as there is em- 
barrassment, or the mistake made by the young lady 
above mentioned who would not answer a civil ques- 
tion ; so long as these mistakes and others are made, 
and the result be stupidity and gloom, and a party 
silent and thumb-twisting, instead of gayly conver- 
sing, as it should be; so long as people do not come to- 
gether easily — it is manifestly proper that the hostess 
should put her finger on the social pendulum, and give 
it a swing to start the conversational clock. All well- 
bred people recognize the propriety of speaking to 
even an enemy at a dinner-party, although they would 
suffer no recognition an hour later. The same princi- 
ple holds good, of course, if, in the true exercise of 
her hospitality, the hostess should introduce some 
person whom she would like to commend. These are 
the exceptions which form the rule. 

Care should be taken in presenting foreigners to 
young ladies ; sometimes titles are dubious. Here, 
a hostess is to be forgiven if she positively declines. 
She may say, politely, "I hardly think I know you 
well enough to dare to present you to that young 
lady. You must wait until her parents (or guardians, 
or chaperon) will present you." 

But the numbers of agreeable people who are ready 
and waiting to be introduced are many. The woman 
of literary distinction and the possessor of an honored 
name may be invincibly shy and afraid to speak ; 
while her next neighbor, knowing her fame perhaps, 
and anxious to make her acquaintance, misconstrues 



46 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

shyness for pride — a masquerade which bashfulness 
sometimes plays ; so two people, w^ith volumes to say 
to each other, remain silent as fishes, until the kind- 
ly magician comes along, and, by the open sesame of 
an introduction, unlocks the treasure which has been 
so deftly hidden. A woman of fashion may enter an 
assembly of thinkers and find herself dreaded and 
shunned, until some kind word creates the entente 
cordiale. In the social entertainments of New York, 
the majority prefer those where the hostess introduces 
her guests — under, of course, these wise and proper 
limitations. 

As for forms of introduction, the simplest are best. 
A lady should introduce her husband as " Mr. Brown," 
" General Brown," "Judge Brown." If he has a title 
she is always to give it to him. Our simple forms 
of titular respect have been condemned abroad, and 
we are accused of being all " colonels " and " gener- 
als ;" but a wife should still give her husband his 
title. In addressing the President we say "Mr. 
President," but his wife should say, "Allow me to in- 
troduce the President to you." The modesty of Mrs. 
Grant, however, never allowed her to call her many- 
titled husband anything but "Mr. Grant," which had, 
in her case, a sweetness above all etiquette. 

Introductions in the homely German fatherland 
are universal, everybody pronouncing to everybody 
else the name of the lady to whom he is talking; 
and among our German fellow-citizens we often see 
a gentleman convoying a lady through a crowded 
assemblage, introducing her to everybody. It is a 
simple, cordial, and pleasant thing enough, as with 



"cold shoulder." 47 

them the acquaintance stops there; and a bow and 
smile hurt nobody. 

No one of heart or mind need feel afraid to talk 
and be agreeable, whether introduced or not, at a 
friend's house ; even if she meets with the rebuff of 
a deaf-and-dumb neighbor, she need not feel heart- 
broken : she is right, and her stiff acquaintance is 
wrong. 

If a gentleman asks to be presented to a lady, she 
should signify her assent in a pleasant way, and pay 
her hostess, through whom the request comes, the com- 
pliment of at least seeming to be gratified at the intro- 
duction. Our American ladies are sometimes a little 
lacking in cordiality of manner, often receiving a new 
acquaintance with that part of their conformation 
which is known as the " cold shoulder." A brusque 
discourtesy is bad, a very effusive courtesy and a too 
low bow are worse, and an overwhelming and patron- 
izing manner is atrocious. The proper salutation lies 
just between the two extremes: the juste milieu is the 
proper thing always. In seeking introductions for 
ourselves, while we need not be shy of making a 
first visit or asking for an introduction, we must still 
beware of " push." There are instincts in the hum- 
blest understanding which will tell us where to draw 
the line. If a person is socially more prominent than 
ourselves, or more distinguished in any way, we should 
not be violently anxious to take the first step; we should 
wait until some happy chance brought us together, 
for we must be as firm in our self-respect as our neigh- 
bor is secure in her exalted position. Wealth lias 
heretofore had very little power to give a person an 



43 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

exclusively fashionable position. Character, breed- 
ing, culture, good connections-^-all must help. An 
aristocrat who is such by virtue of an old and hon- 
ored name which has never been tarnished is a power 
in the newest society as in the oldest; but it is a 
shadowy power, felt rather than described. Educa- 
tion is always a power. 

To be sure, there is a tyranny in large cities of 
what is known as the " fashionable set," formed of 
people willing to spend money ; who make a sort of 
alliance, offensive and defensive ; who can give balls 
and parties and keep certain people out; who have 
the place which many covet; who are too much feared 
and dreaded. If those who desire an introduction to 
this set strive for it too much, they will be sure to 
be snubbed ; for this circle lives by snubbing. If 
such an aspirant will wait patiently, either the whole 
autocratic set of ladies will disband — for such sets 
disentangle easily — or else they in their turn will 
come knocking at the door and ask to be received. 
Hart de tenir salon is not acquired in an hour. It 
takes many years for a new and an uninstructed set 
to surmount all the little awkwardnesses, the dubious 
points of etiquette, that come up in every new shuffle 
of the social cards; but a modest and serene courtesy, 
a civility which is not servile, will be a good intro- 
duction into any society. 

And it is well to have that philosophical spirit 
which puts the best possible interpretation upon the 
conduct of others. Be not in haste to consider your- 
self neglected. Self-respect does not easily receive 
an insult. 



OLD-WORLD FASHIONS. 49 

A lady who is fully aware of her own respectabil- 
ity, who has always lived in the best society, is never 
afraid to bow or call first, or to introduce the people 
whom she may desire should know each other. She 
perhaps presumes on her position, but it is very rare 
that such a person offends; for tact is almost always 
the concomitant of social success. 

There has been a movement lately towards the stately 
bows and courtesies of the past in our recent importa- 
tion of Old-World fashions. A lady silently courte- 
sies when introduced, a gentleman makes a deep bow 
without speaking. We have had the custom of hand- 
shaking — and a very good custom it is — but perhaps 
the latest fashion in ceremonious introduction forbids 
it. If a gentleman carries his crush hat, and a lady 
her fan and a bouquet, hand-shaking may not be per- 
fectly convenient. However, if a lady or gentleman 
extends a hand, it should be taken cordially. Always 
respond to the greeting in the key-note of the giver. 

4 



50 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER IV. 

VISITING. 

No term admits of a wider interpretation than this; 
no subject is capable of a greater number of subdi- 
visions. The matter of formal visiting has led to the 
writing of innumerable books. The decay of social 
visiting is a cause of regret to all the old-fashioned 
people who remember how agreeable it was; but our 
cities have grown too large for it, and in our vil- 
lages the population changes too quickly. The con- 
stant effort to make the two systems shake hands, to 
add cordiality to formality, and to provide for all the 
forced conditions of a rapidly growing and constantly 
changing society, these are but a few of the difficulties 
attending this subject. 

The original plan of an acquaintance in a formal 
city circle was to call once or twice a year on all 
one's friends personally, with the hope and the remote 
expectation of finding two or three at home. When 
society was smaller in New York, this was possible, 
but it soon grew to be impossible, as in all large cities. 
This finally led to the establishment of a reception 
day which held good all winter. That became im- 
possible and tiresome, and was narrowed down to four 
Tuesdays, perhaps, in one month; that resolved itself 
into one or two five-o'clock teas ; and then again, if 



STRICT RULES OF ETIQUETTE. 6.1 

a lady got lame or lazy or luxurious, even the last 
easy method of receiving her friends became too 
onerous, and cards were left or sent in an envelope. 

Now, according to the strict rules of etiquette, one 
card a year left at the door, or one sent in an envelope, 
continues the acquaintance. We can never know 
what sudden pressure of calamity, what stringent need 
of economy, what exigencies of work, may prompt a 
lady to give up her visiting for a season. Even when 
there is no apparent cause, society must ask no ques- 
tions, but must acquiesce in the most good-natured 
view of the subject. 

Still, there must be uniformity. We are not pleased 
to receive Mrs. Brown's card by post, and then to 
meet her making a personal visit to our next neigh- 
bor. We all wish to receive our personal visits, and 
if a lady cannot call on all her formal acquaintances 
once, she had better call on none. 

If she gives one reception a year and invites all her 
"list," she is then at liberty to refrain from either 
calling or sending a card, unless she is asked to a 
wedding or dinner, a ladies' lunch or a christening, or 
receives some very particular invitation which she 
must return by an early personal call — the very for- 
mal and the punctilious say within a week, but that 
is often impossible. 

And if a lady have a day, the call should be made 
on that day; it is rude to ignore the intimation. One 
should try to call on a reception day. But here in a 
crowded city another complication comes in. If a 
lady have four Thursdays in January and several 
other ladies have Thursdays, it may be impossible 



52 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

to reach all those ladies on their reception day. 
There is nothing for it, then, but to good-naturedly 
apologize, and to regret that calling hours are now 
reduced to between four and six in large cities. 

Some people have too many acquaintances. If they 
hope to do anything in the world but drive about and 
leave cards, they must exonerate themselves from 
blame by giving a reception, having a day or an even- 
ing for receiving, and then trust to the good-nature of 
society, or its forgetfulness, which is about the same 
thing, to excuse them. 

Happy those ladies who can give up an evening a 
week to their friends ; that rubs out the score on the 
social slate, besides giving a number of people a chance 
to spend a very agreeable hour in that society which 
gathers around a hospitable lamp. 

The danger of this kind of hospitality is that it is 
abused by bores, who are too apt to congregate in 
numbers, and to wear out the lady of the house by 
using her parlor as a spot where they are safe from 
the rain and cold and free to bestow their tedious- 
ness on anybody, herself included. Then a lady 
after committing herself to a reception evening often 
wishes to go out herself. It requires unselfishness 
to give up an evening to that large circle, some of 
whom forget it, some go elsewhere, some come too 
often, and sometimes, alas ! no one calls. These are 
the drawbacks of an " evening at home." However, 
it is a laudable custom; one could wish it were more 
common. 

No one can forget the eloquent thanks of such men 
as Horace Walpole, and other persons of distinction, to 



POSITION OF YOUNG MARRIED WOMEN. 53 

the Misses Berry, in London, who kept up their even- 
ing receptions for sixty years. But, from the trials of 
those who have too much visiting, we turn to the peo- 
ple who have all the means and appliances of visiting 
and no one to visit. 

The young married woman who comes to New 
York, or any other large city, often passes years of 
loneliness before she has made her acquaintances. 
She is properly introduced, we will say by her moth- 
er-in-law or some other friend, and then, after a 
round of visits in which she has but, perhaps, im- 
perfectly apprehended the positions and names of 
her new acquaintances, she has a long illness, or she 
is called into mourning, or the cares of the nursery 
surround her, and she is shut out from society until 
it has forgotten her; and when she is ready to emerge, 
it is difficult for her to find her place again in the 
visiting -book. If she is energetic and clever, she 
surmounts this difficulty by giving a series of recep- 
tions, or engaging in charities, or working on some 
committee, making herself of use to society in some 
way ; and thus picks up her dropped stitches. But 
some young women are without the courage and tact 
to do this thing; they wait, expecting that society 
will find them out, and, taking them up, will do all 
the work and leave them to accept or refuse civilities 
as they please. Society never does this ; it has too 
much on its hands; a few conspicuously beautiful and 
gifted people may occasionally receive such an ova- 
tion, but it is not for the rank and file. 

Every young woman should try to make at least 
one personal visit to those who are older than her 



54 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

self, and she should show charity towards those who 
do not return this visit immediately. Of course, she 
has a right to be piqued if her visit be persistently 
ignored ; and she should not press herself upon a 
cold or indifferent acquaintance, but she should be 
slow to wrath; and if she is once invited to the older 
lady's house, it is worth a dozen calls so far as the 
intention of civility is concerned. 

It is proper to call in person, or to leave a card, 
after an acquaintance has lost a relative, after an en- 
gagement is announced, after a marriage has taken 
place, after a return from Europe, and of course after 
an invitation has been extended; but, as society grows 
larger and larger, the first four visits may be omitted, 
and cards sent if it is impossible to pay the visits 
personally. Most ladies in large cities are invisible ex- 
cept on their days; in this way alone can they hope to 
have any time for their own individual tastes, be these 
what they may — china painting, authorship, embroid- 
ery, or music. So the formal visiting gets to be a 
mere matter of card-leaving; and the witty author who 
suggested that there should be a " clearing-house for 
cards," and who hailed the Casino at Newport as a 
good institution for the same, was not without genius. 
One hates to lose time in this world while greasing 
the machinery, and the formal, perfunctory card-leav- 
ing is little else. 

Could we all have abundant leisure and be sure to 
find our friends at home, what more agreeable busi- 
ness than visiting? To wander from one pleasant in- 
terior to another, to talk a little harmless gossip, to 
hear the last mot, the best piece of news, to see one's 



A "KARA AVIS." 55 

friends, their children, and the stranger within their 
gates — all this is charming; it is the Utopia of so- 
ciety; it would be the apotheosis of visiting — if 
there were such a thing ! 

Unfortunately, it is impossible. There may be here 
and there a person of such exalted leisure that he 
can keep his accounts to society marked in one of 
those purple satin manuals stamped "Visites," and 
make the proper marks every day under the heads of 
"address," "received," " returned visits,*' and "recep- 
tion days,'' but he is a vara avis. 

Certain rules are, however, immutable. A first call 
from a new acquaintance should be speedily returned. 
These are formal calls, and should be made in person 
between the hours of four and six in Xew York and 
other large cities. Every town has its own hours for 
receiving, however. When calling for the first time on 
several ladies not mother and daughters in one family, 
a card should be left on each. In the first call of the 
season, a lady leaves her own card and those of her 
husband, sons, and daughters. 

A lady has a right to leave her card without asking 
for the lady of the house if it is not her day, or if 
there is any reason — such as bad weather, pressure of 
engagements, or the like — which renders time an im- 
portant matter. 

If ladies are receiving, and she is admitted, the vis- 
itor should leave her husband's cards for the gentle- 
men of the family on the hall table. Strangers stay- 
ing in town who wish to be called upon should Bend 
their cards by post, with address attached, to those 
whom they would like to see. 



56 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

There is no necessity of calling after a tea or gen- 
eral reception if one has attended the festivity, or 
has left or sent a card on that day. 

For reception days a lady wears a plain, dark, rich 
dress, taking care, however, never to be overdressed 
at home. She rises when her visitors enter, and is 
careful to seat her friends so that she can have a word 
with each. If this is impossible, she keeps her eye on 
the recent arrivals to be sure to speak to every one. 
She is to be forgiven if she pays more attention to the 
aged, to some distinguished stranger, or to some one 
who has the still higher claim of misfortune, or to one 
of a modest and shrinking temperament, than to one 
young, gay, fashionable, and rich. If she neglects 
these fortunate visitors they will not feel it ; if she 
bows low to them and neglects the others, she betrays 
that she is a snob. If a lady is not sure that she is 
known by name to her hostess, she should not fail to 
pronounce her own name. Many ladies send their 
cards to the young brides who have come into a 
friend's family, and yet who are without personal 
acquaintance. Many, alas ! forget faces, so that a 
name quickly pronounced is a help. In the event of 
an exchange of calls between two ladies who have nev- 
er met (and this has gone on for years in New York, 
sometimes until death has removed one forever), they 
should take an early opportunity of speaking to each 
other at some friend's house ; the younger should ap- 
proach the elder and introduce herself ; it is always 
regarded as a kindness ; or the one who has received 
the first attention should be the first to speak. 

It is well always to leave a card in the hall even if 



57 

one is received, as it assists the lady's memory in her 
attempts to return these civilities. Cards of condo- 
lence must be returned by a mourning-card sent in an 
envelope at such reasonable time after the death of a 
relative as one can determine again to take up the 
business of society. When the separate card of a 
lady is left, with her reception day printed in one cor- 
ner, two cards of her husband should be left, one for 
the lady, the other for the master, of the house ; but 
after the first call of the season, it is not necessary to 
leave the husband's card, except after a dinner invi- 
tation. It is a convenience, although not a universal 
custom, to have the joint names of husband and wife, 
as " Dr. and Mrs. J. B. Watson," printed on one card, 
to use as a card of condolence or congratulation, 
but not as a visiting-card. These cards are used as 
"P. P. C." cards, and can be sent in an envelope by 
post. Society is rapidly getting over its prejudice 
against sending cards by post. In Europe it is always 
done, and it is much safer. Etiquette and hospitality 
have been reduced to a system in the Old World. It 
would be much more convenient could we do that 
here. Ceremonious visiting is the machinery by which 
an acquaintance is kept up in a circle too large for 
social visiting ; but every lady should try to make one 
or two informal calls each winter on intimate friends. 
These calls can be made in the morning in the plain- 
est walking-dress, and are certainly the most agreeable 
and flattering of all visits. 



58 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER V. 

INVITATIONS, ACCEPTANCES, AND REGRETS. 

The engraving of invitation-cards has become the 
important function of more than one enterprising 
firm in every city, so that it seems unnecessary to say 
more than that the most plain and simple style of 
engraving the necessary words is all that is requisite. 

The English ambassador at Rome has a plain, stiff, 
unglazed card of a large size, on which is engraved, 

Sir Augustas and Lady Paget 

request the pleasure of company 

on Thursday evening, November fifteenth, at ten o'clock. 
The favor of an answer is requested. 

The lady of the house writes the name of the in- 
vited guest in the blank space left before the word 
"company." Many entertainers in America keep 
these blanks, or half- engraved invitations, always on 
hand, and thus save themselves the trouble of writing 
the whole card. 

Sometimes, however, ladies prefer to write their 
own dinner invitations. The formula should always 

he, 

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Brown 

request the pleasure of 

Mr. and Mrs. Jones's company at dinner, 

November fifteenth, at seven o'clock, 

132 Blank St. West 



INVITATIONS TO DINNEB. 53 

These invitations should be immediately answered, 
and with a peremptory acceptance or a regret. Never 
enter into any discussion or prevision with a dinner 
invitation. Never write, saying "you will come if 
you do not have to leave town," or that you will "try 
to come," or, if you are a married pair, that you w r ill 
"one of you come." Your hostess wants to know- 
exactly who is coming and who isn't, that she may 
arrange her table accordingly. Simply say, 

Mr. and Mrs. James Jones 

accept icith pleasure the polite invitation of 

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Brown for dinner 

o n JSove niber fiftee n th , 

at seven o'clock. 

Or if it is written in the first person, accept in the 
same informal manner, but quickly and decisively. 

After having accepted a dinner invitation, if illness 
or any other cause interfere with your going to the 
dinner, send an immediate note to your hostess, that 
she may fill your place. Never selfishly keep the 
place open for yourself if there is a doubt about your 
going. It has often made or marred the pleasure of 
a dinner-party, this hesitancy on the part of a guest 
to send in time to her hostess her regrets, caused by 
the illness of her child, or the coming on of a cold, or 
a death in the family, or any other calamity. Re- 
member always that a dinner is a most formal affair, 
that it is the highest social compliment, that its hap- 
py fulfilment is of the greatest importance to the 
hostess, and that it must be met in the same formal 
spirit. It precludes, on her part, the necessity of hav- 
ing to make a first call, if she be the older resident. 



60 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

although she generally calls first. Some young neo- 
phytes in society, having been asked to a dinner where 
the elderly lady who gave it had forgotten to enclose 
her card, asked if they should call afterwards. Of 
course they were bound to do so, although their 
hostess should have called or enclosed her card. 
However, one invitation to dinner is better than 
many cards as a social compliment. 

We have been asked by many, " To whom should 
the answer to an invitation be addressed?" If Mr. 
and Mrs. Brown invite you, answer Mr. and Mrs. 
Brown. If Mrs. John Jones asks you to a wedding, 
answer Mrs. John Jones. Another of our correspond- 
ents asks, " Shall I respond to the lady of the house 
or to the bride if asked to a wedding?" This seems 
so impossible a confusion that we should not think of 
mentioning so self-evident a fact had not the doubt 
arisen. One has nothing to say to the bride in an- 
swering such an invitation ; the answer is to be sent 
to the hostess, who writes. 

Always carefully observe the formula of your invi- 
tation, and answer it exactly. As to the card of the 
English ambassador, a gentleman should write : "Mr. 
Algernon Gracie will do himself the honor to accept 
the invitation of Sir Augustus and Lady Paget." In 
America he would be a trifle less formal, saying, 
"Mr. Algernon Gracie will have much pleasure in 
accepting the polite invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Henry 
Brown." We notice that on all English cards the 
" R. S. V. P." is omitted, and that a plain line of Eng- 
lish script is engraved, saying, "The favor of an an- 
swer is requested." 



GENTLEMEN MUST "REQUEST THE PLEASURE.'' 01 

Iii this country the invitations to a dinner are al- 
ways in the name of both host and hostess, but invi- 
tations to a ball, "at home," a tea. or garden-party, are 
in the name of the hostess alone. At a wedding the 
names of both host and hostess are given. And if a 
father entertains for his daughters, he being a wid- 
ower, his name appears alone for her wedding ; but 
if his eldest daughter presides over his household, his 
and her name appear together for dinners, receptions, 
and "at homes.'' Many widowed fathers, however, 
omit the names of their daughters on the invitation. 
A young lady at the head of her father's house may, 
if she is no longer very young, issue her own cards 
for a tea. It is never proper for very young ladies 
to invite gentlemen in their own name to visit at the 
house, call on them, or to come to dinner. The invi- 
tation must come from the father, mother, or chap- 
eron. 

At the Assembly, Patriarchs', Charity ball, or any 
public affair, the word "ball" is used, but no lady 
invites you to a "ball*' at her own house. The 
words "At Home,'' with "Cotillon" or "Dancing" 
in one corner, and the hour and date, alone are nec- 
essary. If it is to be a small, informal dance, the word 
" Informal " should be engraved in one corner. Offi- 
cers of the army and navy giving a ball, members of 
the hunt, bachelors, members of a club, heads of com- 
mittees, always "request the pleasure," or, " the honor 
of your company." It is not proper for a gentleman 
to describe himself as "at home ;" he must "reqm 
the pleasure." A rich bachelor of Utopia who gave 
many entertainments made this mistake, and Bent a 



62 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

card — "Mr. Horatio Brown. At Home. Tuesday, 
November fourteenth. Tea at four " — to a lady who 
had been an ambassadress. She immediately replied : 
Mrs. Rousby is very glad to hear that Mr. Horatio 
Brown is at home — she hopes that he will stay there ; 
but of what possible consequence is that to Mrs. 
Rousby ?" This was a piece of rough wit, but it told 
the young man of his mistake. Another card, issued 
with the singular formula, "Mrs. Ferguson hopes to 
see Mrs. Rousby at the church," on the occasion of 
the wedding of a daughter, brought forth the rebuke, 
" Nothing is so deceitful as human hope." The phrase 
is an improper one. Mrs. Ferguson should have " re- 
quested the pleasure." 

In asking for an invitation to a ball for friends, 
ladies must be cautious not to intrude too far, or to 
feel offended if refused. Often a hostess has a larger 
list than she can fill, and she is not able to ask all 
whom she would wish to invite. Therefore a very 
great discretion is to be observed on the part of those 
who ask a favor. A lady may always request an invi- 
tation for distinguished strangers, or for a young dan- 
cing man if she can answer for him in every way, but 
rarely for a married couple, and almost never for a 
couple living in the same city, unless newly arrived. 

Invitations to evening or day receptions are general- 
ly " at home " cards. A lady may use her own visiting 
cards for five-o'clock tea. For other entertainments, 
"Music," "Lawn-tennis," " Garden - party," "Read- 
ings and Recitals," may be engraved in one corner, 
or written in by the lady herself. 

As for wedding invitations, they are almost invari- 



INVITATIONS TO LADIES' LUNCHES. 63 

ably sent out by the parents of the bride, engraved in 
small script on note-paper. The style can always be 
obtained of a fashionable engraver. They should be 
sent out a fortnight before the wedding-day, and are 
not to be answered unless the guests are requested to 
attend a " sit-down" breakfast, when the answer must be 
as explicit as to a dinner. Those who cannot attend 
the wedding send or leave their visiting-cards either 
on the day of the wedding or soon after. Invitations 
to a luncheon are generally written by the hostess on 
note-paper, and should be rather informal, as lunch- 
eon is an informal meal. However, nowadays ladies' 
luncheons have become such grand, consequential, and 
expensive affairs, that invitations are engraved and 
sent out a fortnight in advance, and answered imme- 
diately. There is the same etiquette as at dinner ob- 
served at these formal luncheons. There is such a 
thing, however, as a " stand-up " luncheon — a sort of 
reception with banquet, from which one could absent 
one's self without being missed. 

Punctuality in keeping all engagements is a feature 
of a well-bred character, in society as well as in busi- 
ness, and it cannot be too thoroughly insisted upon. 

In sending a " regret " be particular to word your 
note most respectfully. Never write the word " re- 
grets" on your card unless you wish to insult your 
hostess. Send a card without any pencilling upon it, 
or write a note, thus: "Mrs. Brown regrets that a 
previous engagement will deprive her of the pleasure 
of accepting the polite invitation of Mrs. Jones." 

No one should, in the matter of accepting or refus- 
ing an invitation, economize his politeness. It is bet- 



64 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

ter to err on the other side. Your friend has done 
his best in inviting you. 

The question is often asked us, " Should invitations 
be sent to people in mourning?" Of course they 
should. No one would knowingly intrude on a house 
in which there is or has been death within a month ; 
but after that, although it is an idle compliment, it is 
one which must be paid ; it is a part of the machinery 
of society. As invitations are now directed by the 
hundreds by hired amanuenses, a lady should careful- 
ly revise her list, in order that no names of persons 
deceased may be written on her cards; but the mem- 
bers of the family who remain, and who have suffered 
a loss, should be carefully remembered, and should 
not be pained by seeing the name of one who has de- 
parted included in the invitations or wedding-cards. 
People in deep mourning are not invited to dinners or 
luncheons, but for weddings and large entertainments 
cards are sent as a token of remembrance and compli- 
ment. After a year of mourning the bereaved family 
should send out cards with a narrow black edge to all 
who have remembered them. 

Let it be understood that in all countries a card 
sent by a private hand in an envelope is equivalent 
to a visit. In England one sent by post is equivalent 
to a visit, excepting after a dinner. Nothing is pen- 
cilled on a card sent by post, except the three letters 
"P. P. C." No such words as " accepts," "declines," 
" regrets " should be written on a card. As much ill- 
will is engendered in New York by the loss of cards 
for large receptions and the like, some of which the 
messenger-boys fling into the gutter, it is a thousand 



BJSHDING INVITATIONS BY MAIL. 65 

pities that we cannot agree to send all invitations by 
mail. People always get letters that are sent by p 
particularly those which they could do without. Why 
should they not get their more interesting letters that 
contain invitations ? It is considered thoroughly re- 
spectful in England, and as our people are fond of 
copying that stately etiquette, why should they not 
low this sensible part of it? 

It is in every sense as complimentary to send a let- 
ter by the post as by the dirty fingers of a hired mes- 
senger. Very few people in this country can afford 
to send by their own servants, who. again, rarely find 
the right address. 

5 



66 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE ETIQUETTE OF WEDDINGS. 

Scarcely a week passes during the year that the 
fashionable journals do not publish "answers to cor- 
respondents" on that subject of all others most in- 
teresting to young ladies, the etiquette of weddings. 
No book can tell the plain truth with sufficient em- 
phasis, that the etiquette at a grand wedding is al- 
ways the same. The next day some one writes to a 
newspaper again, 

" Shall the bridegroom wear a dress -coat at the 
hour of eleven a.m., and who pays for the wedding- 
cards?" The wedding of to-day in England has 
"set the fashion" for America. No man ever puts 
on a dress-coat before his seven-o'clock dinner, there- 
fore every bridegroom is dressed in a frock-coat and 
light trousers of any pattern he pleases; in other 
words, he wears a formal morning dress, drives to 
the church with his best man, and awaits the arrival 
of the bride in the vestry-room. He may wear gloves 
or not as he chooses. The best man is the intimate 
friend, sometimes the brother, of the groom. He 
accompanies him to the church, as we have said, fol- 
lows him to the altar, stands at his right hand a lit- 
tle behind him, and holds his hat during the mar- 
riage-service. After that is ended he pays the cler- 



FORMS OBSERVED AT WEDDINGS. 67 

gyman's fee, accompanies, in a coupe by himself, the 
bridal party home, and then assists the ushers to in- 
troduce friends to the bridal pair. 

The bridegroom is allowed to make what presents 
he pleases to the bride, and to send something in the 
nature of a fan, a locket, a ring, or a bouquet to the 
bridesmaids; he has also to buy the wedding-ring, 
and, of course, he sends a bouquet to the bride; but he 
is not to furnish cards or carriages or the wedding- 
breakfast ; this is all done by the bride's family. In 
England the groom is expected to drive the bride 
away in his own carriage, but in America even that 
is not often allowed. 

The bride meantime is dressed in gorgeous array, 
generally in white satin, with veil of point-lace and 
orange blossoms, and is driven to the church in a car- 
riage with her father, who gives her away. Her 
mother and other relatives having preceded her take 
the front seats. Her bridesmaids should also precede 
her, and. await her in the chancel of the church. 

The ushers then proceed to form the procession 
with which almost all city weddings are begun. The 
ushers first, two and two; then the bridesmaids, two 
and two ; then some pretty children — bridesmaids un- 
der ten ; and then the bride, leaning on her father's 
right arm. Sometimes the child bridesmaids precede 
the others. As the cortege reaches the lowest altar- 
step the ushers break ranks and go to the right and 
left ; the bridesmaids also separate, going to the right 
and left, leaving a space for the bridal pair. As the 
bride reaches the lowest step the bridegroom ad- 
vances, takes her by her right hand, and conducts her 



68 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

to the altar, where they both kneel. The clergyman, 
being already in his place, signifies to them when to 
rise, and then proceeds to make the twain one. 

The bridal pair walk down the aisle arm-in-arm, 
and are immediately conducted to the carriage and 
driven home ; the rest follow. In some cases, but 
rarely in this country, a bridal register is signed in 
the vestry. 

Formerly brides removed the whole glove; now 
they adroitly cut the finger of the left-hand glove, so 
that they can remove that without pulling off the 
whole glove for the ring. Such is a church w T edding, 
performed a thousand times alike. The organ peals 
forth the w r edding-march, the clergyman pronounces 
the necessary vows to slow music, or not, as the con- 
tracting parties please. Music, however, adds very 
much to this ceremony. In a marriage at home, the 
bridesmaids and best man are usually dispensed with. 
The clergyman enters and faces the company, the 
bridal pair follow and face him. After the ceremony 
the clergyman retires, and the wedded pair receive 
congratulations. 

An attempt has been made in America to introduce 
the English fashion of a wedding-breakfast. It is 
not as yet acclimated, but it is, perhaps, well to de- 
scribe here the proper etiquette. The gentlemen and 
ladies who are asked to this breakfast should be ap- 
prised of that honor a fortnight in advance, and 
should accept or decline immediately, as it has all the 
formality of a dinner, and seats are, of course, very 
important. On arriving at the house w T here the break- 
fast is to be held, the gentlemen leave their hats in 



DRINKING HEALTHS. 09 

the hall, but ladies do not remove their bonnets. Af- 
ter greeting the bride and bridegroom, and the father 
and mother, the company converse for a few moments 
until breakfast is announced. Then the bride and 
groom go first, followed by the bride's father with 
the groom's mother, then the groom's father with 
the bride's mother, then the best man with the first 
bridesmaid, then the bridesmaids with attendant gen- 
tlemen, who have been invited for this honor, and 
then the other invited guests, as the bride's mother 
has arranged. Coffee and tea are not offered, but 
bouillon, salads, birds, oysters, and other hot and cold 
dishes, ices, jellies, etc., are served at this breakfast, 
together with champagne and other wines, and finally 
the wedding-cake is set before the bride, and she cuts 
a slice. 

The health of the bride and groom is then proposed 
by the gentleman chosen for this office, generally the 
father of the groom, and responded to by the father 
of the bride. The groom is sometimes expected to 
respond, and he proposes the health of the brides- 
maids, for which the best man returns thanks. Unless 
all are unusually happy speakers, this is apt to be awk- 
ward, and " stand-up " breakfasts are far more com- 
monly served, as the French say, en buffet. In the 
first place, the possibility of asking more people com- 
mends this latter practice, and it is far less trouble to 
serve a large, easy collation to a number of people 
standing about than to furnish what is really a din- 
ner to a number sitting down. 

AYedding presents are sent any time within two 
months before the wedding, the earlier the better, as 



*70 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

many brides like to arrange their own tables artisti- 
cally, if the presents are shown. Also, all brides 
should write a personal note thanking each giver for 
his gift, be it large or small. 

All persons who send gifts should be invited to the 
wedding and to the reception, although the converse 
of this proposition does not hold true; for not all who 
are asked to the wedding are expected to send gifts. 

Wedding presents have now become almost absurd- 
ly gorgeous. The old fashion, which was started 
among the frugal Dutch, of giving the young couple 
their household gear and a sum of money with which 
to begin, has now degenerated into a very bold dis- 
play of wealth and ostentatious generosity, so that 
friends of moderate means are afraid to send any- 
thing. Even the cushion on which a wealthy bride 
in New York was lately expected to kneel was so 
elaborately embroidered with pearls that she visibly 
hesitated to press it with her knee at the altar. Sil- 
ver and gold services, too precious to be trusted to 
ordinary lock and key, are displayed at the wedding 
and immediately sent off to some convenient safe. 
This is one of the necessary and inevitable overgrowths 
of a luxury which we have not yet learned to man- 
age. In France they do things better, those nearest 
of kin subscribing a sum of money, which is sent to 
the bride's mother, who expends it in the bridal trous- 
seau, or in jewels or silver, as the bride pleases. 

So far has this custom transcended good taste that 
now many persons of refined minds hesitate to show 
the presents. 

After giving an hour and a half to her guests, the 



WEDDIXG-FAVORS. 7 1 

bride retires to change her dress; generally her most 
intimate friends accompany her. She soon returns 
in her travelling-dress, and is met at the foot of the 
stairs by the groom, who has also changed his dress. 
The father, mother, and intimate friends kiss the 
bride, and, as the happy pair drive off, a shower of 
satin slippers and rice follows them. If one slipper 
alights on the top of the carriage, luck is assured to 
them forever. 

Wedding-cake is no longer sent about. It is neatly 
packed in boxes; each guest takes one, if she likes, as 
she leaves the house. 

Wedding-favors made of white ribbon and artifi- 
cial flowers are indispensable in England, but Amer- 
ica has had the good taste to abjure them until lately. 
Such ornaments are used for the horses' ears and the 
servants' coats in this country. Here the groom wears 
a boutonniere of natural flowers. 

A widow should never be accompanied by brides- 
maids, or wear a veil or orange-blossoms at her mar- 
riage. She should at church wear a colored silk and 
a bonnet. She should be attended by her father, 
brother, or some near friend. 

It is proper for her to remove her first wedding- 
ring, as the wearing of that cannot but be painful to 
the bridegroom. 

If married at home, the widow bride may wear a 
light silk and be bonnetless, but she should not in- 
dulge in any of the signs of first bridal. 

It is an exploded idea that of allowing every one to 
kiss the bride. It is only meet that the near rela- 
tives do that. 



72 MANNERS AXD SOCIAL USAGES. 

The formula for wedding-cards is generally this : 

Mr. and Mrs. Brown 

request the pleasure of your company 

at the wedding of their daughter Maria to John Stanley, 

at Ascension Church, 

on Tuesday, November fifteenth, 

at two o'clock. 

These invitations are engraved on note-paper. 

If friends are invited to a wedding-breakfast or a 
reception at the house, that fact is stated on a sepa- 
rate card, which is enclosed in the same envelope. 

Of course in great cities, with a large acquaintance, 
many are asked to the church and not to the house. 
This fact should never give offence. 

The smaller card runs in this fashion : 

Reception 
at 99 B Street, at half past two. 

To these invitations the invited guests make no re- 
sponse save to go or to leave cards. All invited 
guests, however, are expected to call on the young 
couple and to invite them during the year. 

Of course there are quieter weddings and very 
simple arrangements as to serving refreshments : a 
wedding-cake and a decanter of sherry often are 
alone offered to the witnesses of a wedding. 

Many brides prefer to be married in travelling- 
dress and hat, and leave immediately, without con- 
gratulations. 

The honey-moon in our busy land is usually only a 
fortnight in the sky, and some few bridal pairs prefer 
to spend it at the quiet country house of a friend, as 



SUITABLE TIME FOR MARRIAGE. 73 

is the English fashion. But others make a hurried 
trip to Niagara, or to the Thousand Islands, or go 
to Europe, as the case may be. It is extraordinary 
that none stay at home ; in beginning a new life all 
agree that a change of place is the first requisite. 

After the return home, bridal dinners and parties 
are offered to the bride, and she is treated with dis- 
tinction for three months. Her path is often strewed 
with flowers from the church to her own door, and it is, 
metaphorically, so adorned during the first few weeks 
of married life. Every one hastens to welcome her to 
her new condition, and she has but to smile and ac- 
cept the amiable congratulations and attentions which 
are showered upon her. Let her parents remember, 
however, in sending cards after the wedding, to let 
the bride's friends know where she can bo found in 
her married estate. 

Now as to the time for the marriage. There is 
something exquisitely poetical in the idea of a June 
wedding. It is the very month for the softer emo- 
tions and for the wedding journey. In England it is 
the favorite month for marriages. May is consid- 
ered unlucky, and in an old almanac of 1678 we find 
the following notice : " Times prohibiting marriage : 
Marriage comes in on the 13th day of January and 
at Septuagesima Sunday; it is out again until Low 
Sunday, at which time it comes in again and goes not 
out until Rogation Sunday. Thence it is forbidden 
until Trinity Sunday, from whence it is unforbidden 
until Advent Sunday; but then it goes out and conies 
not in again until the 13th of January next follow- 
ing." 



74 MANNEKS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Our brides have, however, all seasons for their own, 
excepting May, as we have said, and Friday, an un- 
lucky day. The month of roses has very great rec- 
ommendations. The ceremony is apt to be performed 
in the country at a pretty little church, which lends 
its altar-rails gracefully to wreaths, and whose Gothic 
windows open upon green lawns and trim gardens. 
The bride and her maids can walk over the delicate 
sward without soiling their slippers, and an opportu- 
nity offers for carrying parasols made entirely of flow- 
ers. But if it is too far to walk, the bride is driven 
to church in her father's carriage with him alone, 
her mother, sisters, and bridesmaids having preceded 
her. In England etiquette requires that the bride 
and groom should depart from the church in the 
groom's carriage. It is strict etiquette there that the 
groom furnish the carriage with which they return 
to the wedding-breakfast and afterwards depart in 
state, with many wedding-favors on the horses' heads, 
and huge white bouquets on the breasts of coachman 
and footman. 

It is in England, also, etiquette to drive with four 
horses to the place where the honey -moon is to be 
spent ; but in America the drive is generally to the 
nearest railway-station. 

Let us give a further sketch of the duties of the 
best man. He accompanies the groom to the church 
and stands near him, waiting at the altar, until the 
bride arrives ; then he holds the groom's hat. He 
signs the register afterwards as witness, and pays the 
clergyman's fee, and then follows the bridal proces- 
sion out of the church, joining the party at the house, 



DUTIES OF THE BEST MAX. 75 

where he still further assists the groom by present- 
ing the guests. The bridesmaids sometimes form a 
line near the door at a June wedding, allowing the 
bride to walk through this pretty alley-way to the 
church. 

The bridegroom's relatives sit at the right of the 
altar or communion rails, thus being on the bride- 
groom's right hand, and those of the bride sit on the 
left, at the bride's left hand. The bridegroom and 
best man stand on the clergyman's left hand at the 
altar. The bride is taken by her right hand by the 
groom, and of course stands on his left hand ; her fa- 
ther stands a little behind her. Sometimes the female 
relatives stand in the chancel with the bridal group, 
but this can only happen in a very large church ; and 
the rector must arrange this, as in high churches the 
marriages take place outside the chancel. 

After the ceremony is over the clergyman bends 
over and congratulates the young people. The bride 
then takes the left arm of the groom, and passes 
down the aisle, followed by her bridesmaids and the 
ushers. 

Some of our correspondents have asked us what the 
best man is doing at this moment ? Probably waiting 
in the vestry, or, if not, he hurries down a side aisle, 
gets into a carriage, and drives to the house where the 
wedding reception is to be held. 

October is a good month for both city and country 
weddings. In our climate, the brilliant October da; 
not too warm, are admirable for the city guests, who 
are invited to a country place for the wedding, and c 
tainly it is a pleasant season for the wedding joum 



76 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Travelling costumes for brides in England are very 
elegant, even showy. Velvet, and even light silks 
and satins, are used ; but in our country plain cloth 
and cashmere costumes are more proper and more 
fashionable. 

For weddings in families where a death has recently 
occurred, all friends, even the widowed mother, should 
lay aside their mourning for the ceremony, appearing 
in colors. It is considered unlucky and inappropriate 
to wear black at a wedding. In our country a wid- 
owed mother appears at her daughter's wedding in 
purple velvet or silk ; in England she wears deep 
cardinal red, which is considered, under these circum- 
stances, to be mourning, or proper for a person who 
is in mourning. 

We should add that ushers and groomsmen are un- 
known at an English wedding. The sexton of the 
church performs the functions which are attended to 
here by ushers. 

Note.— The young people who are about to be married make 
a list together as to whom cards should be sent, and all cards 
go from the young lady's family. No one thinks it strange to 
get cards for a wedding. A young lady should write a note of 
thanks to every one who sends her a present before she leaves 
home ; all her husband's friends, relatives, etc. , all Jtier own, 
and to people whom she does not know these notes should es- 
pecially be written, as their gifts may be prompted by a sense of 
kindness to her parents or her fiance, which she should recog- 
nize. It is better taste to write these notes on note-paper than 
on cards. It is not necessary to send cards to each member of 
a family ; include them all under the head of ' ' Mr. and Mrs. 
Brown and family." It would be proper for a young lady to 
send her cards to a physician under whose care she has been if 



NOTE OF THANKS FOR WEDDING PRESENTS. 77 

she was acquainted with him socially, but it is not expected 
when the acquaintance is purely professional. A fashionable 
and popular physician would be swamped with wedding-cards 
if that were the custom. If, however, one wishes to show grati- 
tude and remembrance, there would be no impropriety in send- 
ing cards to such a gentleman. 



MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER VIL 

BEFOEE THE WEDDING AND AFTER. 

The reception of an engaged girl by the family of 
her future husband should be most cordial, and no 
time should be lost in giving her a warm welcome. 
It is the moment of all others when she will feel such 
a welcome most gratefully, and when any neglect will 
foe certain to give her the keenest unhappiness. 

It is the fashion for the mother of the groom to in- 
vite both the family of the expectant bride and her- 
self to a dinner as soon as possible after the formal 
announcement of the engagement. The two fami- 
lies should meet and should make friendships at once. 
This is important. 

It is to these near relatives that the probable date 
of the wedding-day is first whispered, in time to allow 
of much consultation and preparation in the selection 
of wedding gifts. In opulent families each has some- 
times given the young couple a, silver dinner service 
and much silver besides, and the rooms of the bride's 
father's house look like a jeweller's shop w T hen the 
presents are showm. All the magnificent ormolu or- 
naments for the chimney-piece, handsome clocks and 
lamps, fans in large quantities, spoons, forks by tho 
hundred, and of late years the fine gilt ornaments, 
furniture, camel's-hair shawls, bracelets — all are piled 



WEDDING GIFTS. 79 

up in most admired confusion. And when the in- 
vitations are out, then come in the outer world with 
their more hastily procured gifts ; rare specimens of 
china, little paintings, ornaments for the person — all, 
all are in order. 

A present is generally packed where it is bought, 
and sent with the giver's card from the shop to the 
bride directly. She should always acknowledge its 
arrival by a personal note written by herself. A 
young bride once gave mortal offence by not thus 
acknowledging her gifts. She said she had so many 
that she could not find time to write the notes, 
which was naturally considered boastful and most 
ungracious. 

Gifts which owe their value to the personal taste 
or industry of the friend who sends are particularly 
complimentary. A piece of embroidery, a painting, 
a water -color, are most flattering gifts, as they be- 
token a long and predetermined interest. 

No friend should be deterred from sending a small 
present, one not representing a money value, because 
other and richer people can send a more expensive 
one. Often the little gift remains as a most endear- 
ing and useful souvenir. 

As for showing the wedding gifts, that is a thing 
which must be left to individual taste. Some people 
disapprove of it, and consider it ostentatious ; others 
have a large room devoted to the display of the pres- 
ents, and it is certainly amusing to examine them. 

As for the conduct of the betrothed pair during 
their engagement, our American mammas are apt to 
be somewhat more lenient in their views of the libertv 



80 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

to be allowed than are the English. With the latter, 
no young lady is allowed to drive alone with her 
fiance ; there must be a servant in attendance. No 
young lady must visit in the family of her fiance, un- 
less he has a mother to receive her. Nor is she allowed 
to go to the theatre alone with him, or to travel under 
his escort, to stop at the same hotel, or to relax one of 
those rigid rules which a severe chaperon would en- 
force ; and it must be allowed that this severe and 
careful attention to appearances is in the best taste. 

As for the engagement-ring, modern fashion pre- 
scribes a diamond solitaire, which may range in price 
from two hundred and fifty to two thousand dollars. 
The matter of presentation is a secret between the- 
engaged pair. 

Evening weddings do not differ from day weddings 
essentially, except that the bridegroom wears evening 
dress. 

If the wedding is at home, the space where the 
bridal party is to stand is usually marked off by a 
ribbon, and the clergyman comes down in his robes 
before the bridal pair ; they face him, and he faces 
the company. Hassocks are prepared for them to 
kneel upon. After the ceremony the clergyman re- 
tires, and the bridal party take his place, standing to 
receive their friends' congratulations. 

Should there be dancing at a wedding, it is proper 
for the bride to open the first quadrille with the best 
man, the groom dancing with the first bridesmaid. 
It is not, however, very customary for a bride to dance, 
or for dancing to occur at an evening wedding, but it 
is not a bad old custom. 



RECEPTION DAYS AFTER MARRIAGE. 81 

After the bridal pair return from their wedding- 
tour, the bridesmaids each give them a dinner or a 
party, or show some attention, if they are so situated 
that they can do so, The members of the two fam- 
ilies, also, each give a dinner to the young couple. 

It is now a very convenient and pleasant custom 
for the bride to announce with her wedding-cards two 
or more reception days during the winter after her 
marriage, on which her friends can call ujjon her. 
The certainty of finding a bride at home is very 
pleasing. On these occasions she does not wear her 
wedding-dress, but receives as if she had entered 
society as one of its members, The wedding trap- 
pings are ail put away, and she wears a dark silk, 
which may be as handsome as she chooses. As for 
wearing her wedding-dress to balls or dinners after 
her marriage, it is perfectly proper to do so, if she 
divests herself of her veil and her orange-blossoms. 

The bride should be very attentive and conciliatory 
to all her husband's friends. They will look with in- 
terest upon her from the moment they hear of the 
engagement, and it is in the worst taste for her to 
show indifference to them. 

Quiet weddings, either in church or at the house, 
are very much preferred by some families. Indeed, 
the French, from whom we have learned many — and 
might learn more — lessons of grace and good taste, 
infinitely prefer them. 

For a quiet wedding the bride dresses in a travel- 
ling dress and bonnet, and departs for her weddi 
tour. It is the custom in England, as we have said, 
for the bride and groom to drive off in their own car- 



82 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

riage, which is dressed with white ribbons, the coach- 
man and groom wearing white bouquets, and favors 
adorning the horses' ears, and for them to take a 
month's honeymoon. There also the bride (if she be 
Hannah Rothschild or the Baroness Burdett-Coutts) 
gives her bridesmaids very elegant presents, as a lock- 
et or a bracelet, w T hile the groom gives the best man 
a scarf-pin or some gift. The American custom is 
not so universal. However, either bride or groom 
gives something to the bridesmaid and a scarf-pin to 
each usher. Thus a wedding becomes a very expen- 
sive and elaborate affair, which quiet and economical 
people are sometimes obliged to avoid. 

After the marriage invitations are issued, the lady 
does not appear in public. 

The period of card-leaving after a wedding is not 
yet definitely fixed. Some authorities say ten days, 
but that in a crowded city, and with an immense ac- 
quaintance, would be quite impossible. 

If only invited to the church, many ladies consider 
that they perform their whole duty by leaving a card 
sometime during the winter, and including the young 
couple in their subsequent invitations. Very rigorous 
people call, however, within ten days, and if invited 
to the house, the call is still more imperative, and 
should be made soon after the wedding. 

But if a young couple do not send their future 
address, but only invite one to a church-wedding, 
there is often a very serious difficulty in knowing 
where to call, and the first visit must be indefinitely 
postponed until they send cards notifying their friends 
of their whereabouts. 



WEDDING INVITATIONS. 83 

Wedding invitations require no answer. But peo- 
ple living at a distance, who cannot attend the wed- 
ding, should send their cards by mail, to assure the 
hosts that the invitation has been received. The 
usual form for wedding-cards is this: 

Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Chapman 

request your presence at the 

marriage of their daughter, on 

Wednesday even i no, November fourth, at eight o'clock. 

Grace Church. 

The card of the young lady, that of her intended 
husband, and another card to the favored — 

At Home 
after the ceremony, 
7 East Market Street- 
is also enclosed. 

People with a large acquaintance cannot always 
invite all their friends, of course, to a wedding recep- 
tion, and therefore invite all to the church. Some- 
times people who are to give a small wedding at 
home request an answer to the wedding invitation ; 
in that case, of course, an answer should be sent, and 
people should be very careful not to ignore these 
flattering invitations. Any carelessness is inexcusable 
when so important an event is on the tapis. Brides- 
maids, if prevented by illness or sudden bereavement 
from officiating, should notify the bride as soon as 
possible, as it is a difficult thing after a bridal cor- 
tege is arranged to reorganize it. 

As to the wedding-tour, it is no longer considered 
obligatory, nor is the seclusion of the honey-moon 
demanded. A very fashionable girl who married an 



84 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES, 

Englishman last summer at Newport returned in three 
days to take her own house at Newport, and to re- 
ceive and give out invitations. If the newly married 
pair thus begin house-keeping in their own way, they 
generally issue a f ew " At Home " cards, and thereby 
open an easy door for future hospitalities. Certainly 
the once perfunctory bridal tour is no longer deemed 
essential, and the more sensible fashion exists of the 
taking of a friend's house a few miles out of town for 
a month. 

If the bridal pair go to a watering-place during 
their early married days, they should be very careful 
of outward display of tenderness. 

Such exhibitions in the cars or in public places as 
one often sees, of the bride laying her head on her 
husband's shoulder, holding hands, or kissing, are at 
once vulgar and indecent. All public display of an 
affectionate nature should be sedulously avoided. The 
affections are too sacred for such outward showing, 
and the lookers-on are in a very disagreeable position. 
The French call love-making Vegdisme d deux, and no 
egotism is agreeable. People who see a pair of young 
doves cooing in public are apt to say that a quarrel is 
not far off. It is possible for a lover to show every 
attention, every assiduity, and not to overdo his dem- 
onstrations. It is quite possible for the lady to be 
fond of her husband without committing the slightest 
offence against good taste. 

The young couple are not expected, unless Fortune 
has been exceptionally kind, to be immediately re- 
sponsive in the matter of entertainments. The outer 
world is only too happy to entertain them. Nothing 



WHEN THE BRIDE SHOULD RECEIVE. So 

can be more imprudent than for a young couple to 
rush into expenditures which may endanger their 
future happiness and peace of mind, nor should they 
feel that they are obliged at once to return the din- 
ners and the parties given to them. The time will 
come, doubtless, when they will be able to do so. 

But the announcement of a day on which the bride 
will receive her friends is almost indispensable. The 
refreshments on these occasions should not exceed 
tea and cake, or, at the most, punch, tea, chocolate, 
and cakes, which may stand on a table at one end of 
the room, or may be handed by a waiter. Bouillon, 
on a cold day of winter, is also in order, and is per- 
haps the most serviceable of all simple refreshments. 
For in giving a (; four-o'clock tea," or several day re- 
ceptions, a large entertainment is decidedly vulgar. 



86 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

GOLD, SILVER, AND TIN WEDDINGS. 

Very few people have the golden opportunity of 
living together for fifty years in the holy estate of 
matrimony. When they have overcome in so great a 
degree the many infirmities of the flesh, and the com- 
mon incompatibility of tempers, they deserve to be 
congratulated, and to have a wedding festivity which 
shall be as ceremonious as the first one, and twice as 
impressive. But what shall we give them? 

The gifts of gold must be somewhat circumscribed, 
and therefore the injunction, so severe and so unal- 
terable, which holds good at tin and silver weddings, 
that no presents must be given of any other metal 
than that designated by the day, does not hold good 
at a golden wedding. A card printed in gold letters, 
announcing that John Anderson and Mary Brown 
were married, for instance, in 1830, and will celebrate 
their golden wedding in 1880, is generally the only 
golden manifestation. One of the cards recently is- 
sued reads in this way : 

1831. 1881. 

Mr. and Mrs. John Anderson, 

At Home November twenty-first, 1881, 

Golden Wedding, 

17 Carmichael Street, 

at eight o'clock. 



GOLDEX WEDDING?. 87 

All clone in gold, on white, thick English paper, that 
is nearly all the exhibition of gold necessary at a 
golden- wedding, unless some friend gives the aged 
bride a present of jewellery. The bride receives her 
children and grandchildren dressed in some article 
which she wore at her first wedding, if any remain. 
Sometimes a veil, or a handkerchief, or a fan, scarcely 
ever the whole dress, has lasted fifty years, and she 
holds a bouquet of white flowers. A wedding-cake 
is prepared with a ring in it, and on the frosting is 
the date, and the monogram of the two, who have 
lived together so long. 

These golden weddings are apt to be sad. It is 
not well for the old to keep anniversaries — too many 
ghosts come to the feast. Still, if people are happy 
enough to wish to do so, there can be no harm in it. 
Their surroundings may possibly surpass their fond- 
est dreams, but as it regards themselves, the contrast 
is painful. They have little in common with bridal 
joys, and unless it is the wish of some irrepressible 
descendant, few old couples care to celebrate the 
golden wedding save in their hearts. If they have 
started at the foot of the ladder, and l>ave risen, they 
may not wish to remember their early struggles ; if 
they have started high, and have gradually sunk into 
poverty or ill health, they certainly do not wish to 
photograph those better days by the fierce light of 
an anniversary. It is only the very exceptionally 
good, happy, and serene people who can afford to 
celebrate a golden wedding. 

Far otherwise with the silver wedding, which comes 
in this country while people are still young, in the 



88 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

very prime of life, with much before them, and when 
to stop midway to take an account of one's friends 
and one's blessings is a wise and a pleasant thing. 
The cards are issued, printed in silver, somewhat in 
this style : 

1856, 1881. 

Mr. and Mrs. Carter 

request the pleasure of your company 

on Wednesday, October the twenty-seventh, 

at eight o'clock. 

Silver Wedding, 
John Carter. Sarah Smith. 

Such, at least, is one form. Many people do not, 
however, add their names at the end ; while, again, 
some go even farther, and transcribe the marriage 
notice from the newspaper of the period. 

Gifts of silver being comparatively inexpensive, 
and always useful, almost all friends who are invited 
send a gift of silver- ware, marked " Silver Wedding ;" 
or, still better, marked with an appropriate motto, 
and the initials of the pair, engraved in a true-lover's 
knot. 

In old Dutch silver these pretty monograms and 
the lover's knot are very common. This was proba- 
bly put upon the original wedding silver, and we 
know that the art was studied by such men as Al- 
brecht Durer, Benvenuto Cellini, and Rubens, for 
we find among their drawings many monograms and 
such devices. It adds very much to the beauty of a 
piece of silver to bear such engraving, and it is al- 
ways well to add a motto, or a "posy," as the old 
phrase has it, thus investing the gift with a personal 



SILVER WEDDING PEESENTS. 89 

interest, in our absence of armorial bearings. Since 
many pretty ornaments come in silver, it is possible 
to vary the gifts by sometimes presenting flacons (a 
pendant flacon for the chatelaine: some very artistic 
things come in this pretty ornament now, with col- 
ored plaques representing antique figures, etc.). 
Sometimes a costly intaglio is sunk in silver and 
set as a pin. Clocks of silver, bracelets, statuary in 
silver, necklaces, picture-frames, and filigree pendants 
hanging to silver necklaces which resemble pearls ; 
beautiful jewel-cases and boxes for the toilet ; dress- 
ing-cases well furnished with silver ; hand-mirrors set 
in fretted silver ; bracelets, pendant seals, and medal- 
lions in high relief — ail come now for gifts in the 
second precious metal. A very pretty gift was de- 
signed by a young artist for his mother on the cele- 
bration of her silver wedding. It was a monogram 
and love-knot after the fashion of the seventeenth 
century, and made, when joined, a superb belt-clasp, 
each little ornament of the relief repeating the two 
dates. Mantle clasps of solid silver ornamented with 
precious stones, and known in the Middle Ages as 
f er millets > are pretty presents, and these ornaments 
can be also enriched with gold and enamel without 
losing their silver character. Chimerical animals and 
floral ornaments are often used in enriching these 
agrafes. 

Mirrors set in silver are very handsome for the 
toilet - table ; also, brushes and combs can be made 
of it. All silver is apt to tarnish, but a dip in water 
and ammonia cleans it at once, and few people now 
like the white foamy silver ; that which has assumed 



90 MANNEUS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

a gray tint is much more admired. Indeed, artistic 
jewellers have introduced the hammered silver, which 
looks )ike an old tin teapot, and to the admirers of 
the real silver tint is very ugly ; but it renders the 
wearing of a silver chatelaine very much easier, for 
the chains and ornaments which a lady now wears on 
her belt are sure to grow daily into the fashion. Sil- 
ver parasol handles are also very fashionable. We 
have enlarged upon this subject of gifts of silver in 
answer to several questions as to what it is proper to 
give at a silver wedding. Of course the wealthy can 
send pitchers, vases, vegetable dishes, soup tureens, 
and waiters. All the beautiful things which are now 
made by our silversmiths are tempting to the purse. 
There are also handsome silver necklaces, holding old 
and rare coins, and curious watches of silver, resem- 
bling fruits, nuts, and animals. The farther back we 
go in the history of silver- ware, the better models we 
arc sure to obtain. 

As for the entertainment, it includes the inevitable 
cake, of course, and the bride puts the knife into it 
as she did twenty-live years ago. The ring is eagerly 
sought for. Then a large and plentiful repast is of- 
fered, exactly like that of any reception-table. Cham- 
pagne is in order, healths are drunk, and speeches 
made at most of these silver weddings. 

Particularly delightful are silver weddings which 
are celebrated in the country, especially if the house 
is large enough to hold a number of guests. Then 
many a custom can be observed of peculiar signifi- 
cance and friendliness; everybody can help to pre- 
pare the feast, decorate the house with flowers, and 



TIN AND WOODEN WEDDINGS. 91 

save the bride from those tearful moments which 
come with any retrospect. All should try to make 
the scene a merry one, for there is no other reason 
for its celebration. 

Tin weddings, which occur after ten years have 
passed over two married heads, are signals for a gen- 
eral frolic. Not only are the usual tin utensils which 
can be used for the kitchen and household purposes 
offered, but fantastic designs and ornaments are got- 
ten up for the purpose of raising a laugh. One young 
bride received a handsome check from her father-in- 
law, who labelled it " Tin," and sent it to her in a tin 
pocket-book elaborately constructed for the purpose. 
One very pretty tin fender was constructed for the 
fireplace of another, and was not so ugly. A tin 
screen, tin chandeliers, tin fans, and tin tables have 
been offered. If these serve no other purpose, they 
do admirably for theatrical properties later, if the 
family like private plays, etc., at home. 

Wooden weddings occur after five years of mar- 
riage, and afford the bride much refurnishing of the 
kitchen, and nowadays some beautiful presents of 
wood-carving. The wooden wedding, which was be- 
gun in jest with a step-ladder and a rolling-pin several 
years ago, now threatens to become a very splendid 
anniversary indeed, since the art of carving in wood 
is so popular, and so much practised by men and 
women. Every one is ready for a carved box, picture- 
frame, screen, sideboard, chair, bureau, dressing-table, 
crib, or bedstead. Let no one be afraid to offer a 
of wood artistically carved. Everything is in order 
but wooden nutmegs ; they are ruled out. 



92 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

At one of the golden weddings of the Rothschilds 
we read of such presents as a solid gold dinner ser- 
vice ; a chased cup of Benvenuto Cellini in solid gold, 
enriched with precious stones ; a box, with cover of 
gold, in the early Renaissance, with head of Marie 
de Medicis in oxidized gold ; of rings from Cyprus, 
containing sapphires from the tombs of the Crusaders ; 
of solid crystals cut in drinking cups, with handles of 
gold ; of jade goblets set in gold saucers ; of sing- 
ing-birds in gold ; and of toilet appliances, all in solid 
gold, not to speak of chains, rings, etc. This is luxury, 
and as such to be commended to those who can afford 
it. But it must entail great inconvenience. Gold is 
so valuable that a small piece of it goes a great way, 
and even a Rothschild would not like to leave out a 
gold dressing-case, lest it might tempt the most honest 
of waiting-women. 

~No doubt some of our millionaire Americans can 
afford such golden wedding -presents, but of course 
they are rare, and even if common, would be less in 
keeping than some less magnificent gifts. Our re- 
publican simplicity would be outraged and shocked 
at seeing so much coin of the realm kept out of cir- 
culation. 

There are, however, should we wish to make a pres- 
ent to a bride of fifty years' standing, many charming 
bits of gold jewellery very becoming, very artistic, and 
not too expensive for a moderate purse. There are 
the delicate productions of Castellani, the gold and 
enamel of Venice, the gold- work of several different 
colors which has become so artistic; there are the 
modern antiques, copied from the Phoenician jewellery 



A BEAUTIFUL CUSTOM. 93 

found at Cyprus — these made into pins for the cap, 
pendants for the neck, rings and bracelets, boxes for 
the holding of small sweetmeats, so fashionable many 
years ago, are pretty presents for an elderly lady. 
For a gentleman it is more difficult to find souvenirs. 
We must acknowledge that it is always difficult to 
select a present for a gentleman. Unless he has as 
many feet as Briareus had hands, or unless he is a 
centipede, he cannot wear all the slippers given to 
him; and the shirt-studs and sleeve-buttons are equal- 
ly burdensome. Rings are now fortunately in fash- 
ion, and can be as expensive as one pleases. But one 
almost regrets the disuse of snuff, as that gave occa- 
sion for many beautiful boxes. It would be difficult 
to find, however, such gold snuffboxes as were once 
handed round among monarchs and among wealthy 
snuffers. The giving of wedding-presents has had to 
endure many changes since its first beginning, which 
was a wise and generous desire to help the young 
pair to begin house-keeping. It has become now an 
occasion of ostentation. So with the gifts at the gold 
and silver weddings. They have almost ceased to be 
friendly offerings, and are oftener a proof of the giv- 
er's wealth than of his love. 

Xo wonder that some delicate-minded people, wish- 
ing to celebrate their silver wedding, cause a line 
to be printed on their invitations, " Xo presents re- 
ceived." 

Foreigners have a beautiful custom, which we have 
not, of remembering every fete day, every birthday, 
every saint's day, in a friend's calendar. A bouquet, 
a present of fruit, a kind note, a little celebration 



94 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

which costs nothing, occurs in every family on papa's 
birthday or mamma's fete day. But as we have noth- 
ing of that sort, and as most people prefer that, as in 
the case of the hero of the Pirates, a birthday shall 
only come once in four years, it is well for us to cele- 
brate the tin, silver, and golden weddings. 



INVITATIONS TO PARTIES. 95 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE ETIQUETTE OF BALLS. 

A hostess must not use the word " ball " on her 
invitation-cards. She may say, 

Mrs. John Brown requests the pleasure of the company of 

Mr. and Mrs. Amos Smith 

on Thursday evening, November tic enty -second, 

at nine o'clock. 

Dancing. B. S. V. P. 

Or, 

Mrs. John Brown 

At Home 

Thursday evening, November twenty-second, 

at nine o'clock. 

Cotillon at ten. B. S. V. P. 

But she should not indicate further the purpose of 
her party. In New York, where young ladies are in- 
troduced to society by means of a ball at Delmonieo's, 
the invitation is frequently worded, 

Mr. and Mrs. Amos Smith request the pleasure 

of your company 
Thursday evening, November twenty-second, 
at nine o'clock. 
Delmonico's. 

The card of the young debutante is sometimes (al- 
though not always) enclosed. 



96 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

If these invitations are sent to new acquaintances, 
or to strangers in town, the card of the gentleman is 
enclosed to gentlemen, that of both the gentleman 
and his wife to ladies and gentlemen, if it is a first 
invitation. 

A ballroom should be very well lighted, exceeding- 
ly well ventilated, and very gayly dressed. It is the 
height of the gayety of the day ; and although dinner 
calls for handsome dress, a ball demands it. Young 
persons of slender figure prefer light, diaphanous 
dresses; the chaperons can wear heavy velvet and 
brocade. Jewels are in order. A profusion of flow- 
ers in the hands of the women should add their 
brightness and perfume to the rooms. The great 
number of bouquets sent to a debutante is often 
embarrassing. The present fashion is to have them 
hung, by different ribbons, on the arm, so that they 
look as if almost a trimming to the dress. 

Gentlemen who have not selected partners before 
the ball come to their hostess and ask to be presented 
to ladies who will dance with them. As a hostess 
cannot leave her place while receiving, and people 
come at all hours to a ball, she generally asks two or 
three well-known society friends to receive with her, 
who will take this part of her duty off her hands, for 
no hostess likes to see " wall-flowers " at her ball : she 
wishes all her young people to enjoy themselves. 
Well-bred young men always say to the hostess that 
they beg of her to introduce them to ladies who may 
be without partners, as they would gladly make them- 
selves useful to her. After dancing with a lady, and 
walking about the room with her for a few times, a 



ARBAXGEMENT OF SEATS AT BALLS. 97 

gentleman is at perfect liberty to take the young 
lady back to her chaperon and plead another engage- 
ment. 

A great drawback to balls in America is the lack of 
convenience for those who wish to remain seated. In 
Europe, where the elderly are first considered, seats are 
ed around the room, somewhat high, for the chap- 
erons, and at their feet sit the debutantes. These red- 
covered sofas, in two tiers, as it were, are brought in 
by the upholsterer (as we hire chairs for the crowded 
les or readings so common in large cities), and 
are very convenient. It is strange that all large halls 
are not furnished with them, as they make every one 
comfortable at very little expense, and add to the ap- 
pearance of the room. A row of well-dressed ladies, 
in velvet, brocade, and diamonds, some with white 
hair, certainly forms a very distinguished background 
for those who sit at their feet. 

Supper is generally served all the evening from a 
table on which flowers, fruits, candelabra, silver, and 
glass are displayed, and which is loaded with hot 
-, boned turkey, salmon, game pates, salads, 
ices, jellies, and fruits, from the commencement of 
the evening. A hot supper, with plentiful cups of 
bouillon, is served again for those who dance the 
german. 

But if the hostess so prefer, the supper is not 

Ted until she gives the word, when her husband 
leads the way with the most distinguished lady pi 
ent, the rest of the company following. The host 
rarely goes in to supper until every one has 

the opportunity of walking about 



98 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

her ballroom to see if every one is happy and at- 
tended to. If she does go to supper, it is in order 
to accompany some distinguished guest — like the 
President, for instance. This is, however, a point 
which may be left to the tact of the hostess. 

A young lady is not apt to forget her ballroom 
engagements, but she should be sure not to do so. 
She must be careful not to offend one gentleman by 
refusing to dance with him, and then accepting the 
offer of another. Such things, done by frivolous girls, 
injure a young man's feelings unnecessarily, and prove 
that the young lady has not had the training of a 
gentlewoman. A young man should not forget if he 
has asked a young lady for the german. He must 
send her a bouquet, and be on hand to dance with her. 
If kept away by sickness, or a death in his family, he 
must send her a note before the appointed hour. 

It is not necessary to take leave of your hostess at 
a ball. All that she requires of you is to bow to her 
on entering, and to make yourself as agreeable and 
happy as you can while in her house. 

Young men are not always as polite as they should 
be at balls. They ought, if well-bred, to look about, 
and see if any lady has been left unattended at 
supper, to ask if they can go for refreshments, if 
they can lead a lady to a seat, go for a carriage, etc. 
It is not an impertinence for a young man thus to 
speak to a lady older than himself, even if he has not 
been introduced; the roof is a sufficient introduction 
for any such purpose. * 

The first persons asked to dance by the young gen- 
tlemen invited to a house should be the daughters 



OBJECTIONABLE A1IEEICAN CUSTOM. 

of the house. To them and to their immediate i 
.-? and friends must the first attentions be paid. 

I" is not wise for young ladies to join in every 
dance, nor should a young chaperon dance, leaving 
her protegee sitting. The very bad American custom 

sending several vouns^ s^rls to a ball with a verv 

:ng chaperon — perhaps one of their number who 
has just been married — has led to great vulgarity in 
our American city life, not to say to that general 

apprehension of foreigners which offends with 
correcting oar national vanity. A mother should en- 
dearer to attend balls with her daughters, and to stay 
as hmg as they do. But many mother- We are 

not invited : there is not room for usJ* Tn 

-honld not accept. It is a very | Amer- 
ican custom not to invite the mother- L I a lady 
. - — i three 'alls, if her ~ large ~^at she 

can only invite the daughters If it be absolutely 
nee v Hy to limit the invit . the father should 

go with the daughters, for who else is to escort them 
- "heir carriage, take care of them if th 
look to their special or accidental The fact 

:l-i: i : -~ -.'-::■' '::-. :. :- 1 :'.': •■-- :-•;;.:: s :: - : :-'"::>>: 
uf< i jing superfluous on the tag 

deter ladies who entertain from being true to the 
ideas of the best society, which certainly are in favor 
of chaperonage. 

:Id not overcrowd her i To put 

fire hundred people into a hot roc h no ch 

to rest in, and little air to breal 
cruel test to friendship. It is this impossibi. 
putting ? bund r friewh 



100 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

narrow house which has led to the giving of balls at 
public rooms — an innovation which shocked a French 
woman of rank who married an American. " You have 
no safeguard for society in America/' she observed, 
" but your homes. No aristocracy, no king, no court, 
no traditions, but the sacred one of home. Now, do 
you not run great risks when you abandon your 
homes, and bring out your girls at a hotel ?" There 
is something in her wise remarks ; and with the care- 
lessness of chaperonage in cities which are now large- 
ly populated by irresponsible foreigners the dangers 
increase. 

The first duty of a gentleman on entering a ball- 
room is to make his bow to the lady of the house and 
to her daughters ; he should then strive to find his 
host — a very difficult business sometimes. Young men 
are to be very much censured, however, who do not 
find out their host, and insist on being presented to 
him. Paterfamilias in America is sometimes thought 
to hold a very insignificant place in his own house, 
and be good for nothing but to draw checks. This is 
indicative of a very low social condition, and no man 
invited to a gentleman's house should leave it until he 
has made his bow to the head thereof. 

It is proper for intimate friends to ask for invita- 
tions for other friends to a ball, particularly for young 
gentlemen who are "dancing men." More prudence 
should be exercised in asking in behalf of ladies, but 
the hostess has always the privilege of saying that 
her list is full, if she does not wish to invite her 
friends' friends. No offence should be taken if this 
refusal be given politely. 



ARRANGEMENTS AT A BALL. 101 

In a majority of luxurious houses a tea-room is open 
from the beginning to the end of a ball, frequently on 
the second story, where bouillon, tea, coffee, and mac- 
aroons are in order, or a plate of sandwiches, or any 
such light refreshment, for those who do not wish a 
heavy supper. A large bowl of iced lemonade is also 
in this room — a most grateful refreshment after leav- 
ing a hot ballroom. 

The practice of putting crash oyer carpets has 
proyed so unhealthy to the dancers, on account of 
the fine fuzz which rises from it in dancing, that it is 
now almost wholly abandoned ; and parquet floors are 
becoming so common, and the dancing on them is so 
much more agreeable in eyery way, that ladies haye 
their heayy parlor carpets taken up before a ball 
rather than lay a crash. 

A smoking-room, up or down stairs, is set apart for 
the gentlemen, where, in some houses, cigars and bran- 
dy and efferyescent waters are furnished. If this 
provision be not made, it is the height of indelicacy 
for gentlemen to smoke in the dressing-rooms. 

The bad conduct of young men at large balls, where 
they abuse their privileges by smoking, getting drunk 
at supper, eating unreasonably, blockading the tables, 
and behaving in an unseemly manner, even coming to 
blows in the supper-rooms, has been dwelt upon in the 
annals of the past, which annals ever remain a dis- 
grace to the young fashionables of any city. Happily, 
ji breaches of decorum are now so rare that there 
La no need to touch upon them here. 

Many of our correspondents ask the embarrassing 
question, " Who is it proper to invite to a first ball f" 



102 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

This is a question which cannot be answered in a 
general way. The tact and delicacy of the host must 
decide it. 

At public balls there should be managers, ushers, 
stewards, and, if possible, a committee of ladies to 
receive. It is very much more conducive to the 
elegance of a ball if there be a recognized hostess, or 
committee of hostesses: the very aspect of the room is 
thus improved. And to a stranger from another city 
these ladies should be hospitable, taking care that she 
be introduced and treated with suitable attention. 

An awning and carpet should be placed at the front 
entrance of a house in which a ball is to be given, to 
protect the guests against the weather and the gaze 
of the crowd of by-standers who always gather in 
a great city to see the well-dressed ladies alight. 
Unfortunately, in a heavy rain these awnings are 
most objectionable ; they are not water-proof, and as 
soon as they are thoroughly wet they afford no pro- 
tection whatever. 



LETTERS OF OUR ANCESTORS. 103 



CHAPTER X. 

LETTERS AND LETTER-WRITING* 

The person who can write a graceful note is always 
spoken of with phrases of commendation. The epis- 
tolary tfrt is said to be especially feminine, and the 
novelists and essayists are full of compliments to the 
sex, which is alternately praised and objurgated, as 
man feels well or ill. Bulwer says : " A woman is 
the genius of epistolary communication. Even men 
write better to a woman than to one of their own sex. 
No doubt they conjure up, while writing, the loving, 
listening face, the tender, pardoning heart, the ready 
tear of sympathy, and passionate confidences of heart 
and brain flow rapidly from the pen." But there is 
no such thing now as an "epistolary style." Our im- 
mediate ancestors wrote better and longer letters than 
we do. They covered three pages of large letter- 
paper with crow-quill handwriting, folded the paper 
neatly, tucked one edge beneath the other (for there 
were no envelopes), and then sealed it with a wafer 
or with sealing-wax. To send one of these epistles 
was expensive — twenty-five cents from New York to 
Boston. However, the electric telegraph and cheap 
postage and postal-cards may have been said, in a way, 
to have ruined correspondence in the old sense ; lovers 
and fond mothers doubtless still write long letters. bat 



104 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

the business of the letter-writer proper is at an end. 
The writing of notes has, however, correspondingly 
increased ; and the last ten years have seen a pro- 
fuse introduction of emblazoned crest and cipher, 
pictorial design, and elaborate monogram in the cor- 
ners of ordinary note-paper. The old illuminated 
missal of the monks, the fancy of the Japanese, the 
ever-ready taste of the French, all have been exhaust- 
ed to satisfy that always hungry caprice which calls 
for something new. 

The frequency with which notes upon business and 
pleasure must fly across a city and a continent has 
done away, also, with the sealing-wax, whose definite, 
red, clear, oval was a fixture with our grandfathers, and 
which is still the only elegant, formal, and ceremoni- 
ous way acknowledged in England, of sealing a letter. 

There were, however, serious objections to the use 
of wax in, this country, which were discovered during 
the early voyages to California. The intense heat of 
the Isthmus of Panama melted the wax, and letters 
were irretrievably glued together, to the loss of the 
address and the confusion of the postmaster. So the 
glued envelope — common, cheap, and necessary — be- 
came the almost prevailing fashion for all notes as 
well as letters. 

The taste for colored note-paper with flowers in 
the corner was common among the belles of thirty 
years ago — the " rose - colored and scented billet- 
doux " is often referred to in the novels of that pe- 
riod. But colored note-paper fell into disuse long 
ago, and for the last few years we have not seen the 
heavy tints. A few pale greens, grays, blues, and li- 



STYLE OF NOTE-PAPER AND ENVELOPES. 105 

a have, indeed, found a place in fashionable station- 

1 a deep coffee-colored, heavy paper had a little 

run about three years ago; but at the present moment 

no color that is appreciable is considered stylish, uu- 

- it be ecru, which is only a creamy white. 

A long truce is at last bidden to the fanciful, 
lazoned, and colored monogram; the crest and 
cipher are laid on the shelf, and ladies have simply 
the address of their city residence, or the name of 
their country place, printed in one corner (generally 
in color), or, latest device of fashion, a fac- simile of 
their initials, carefully engraved, and dashed across 
the corner of the note-paper. The day of the week, 
also copied from their own handwriting, is often im- 
pressed upon the square cards now so much in use for 
short notes, or on the note-paper. 

There is one fashion which has never changed, and 
will never change, which is always in good taste, and 
which, perhaps, would be to-day the most perfect of 
all styles, and that is, good, plain, thick, English note- 
paper, folded square, put in a square envelope, and 

lied with red sealing-wax which bears the imprint 
of the writer's coat of arms. Xo one can make any 
mistake who uses such stationery as this in any part 
of the world. On such paper and in such form are 
ambassadors 1 notes written ; on such paper and in 
such style would the Princess Louise write her no* 

However, there is no law against the monogram. 
:iy ladies still prefer it, and always use the paper 
which has become familiar to their friends. It 
however, a past rather than a present fashion. 

n of having all the note-paper marked with 



10G MANNEKS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

the address is an admirable one, for it effectually re- 
minds the person who receives the note where the 
answer should be sent — information of which some 
ladies forget the importance, and which should al- 
ways be written, if not printed, at the head of a let- 
ter. It also gives a stylish finish to the appearance 
of the note-paper, is simple, unpretending, and useful. 

The ink should invariably be black. From the very 
superior, lasting qualities of a certain purple fluid, 
which never became thick in the inkstand, certain 
ladies, a few years ago, used the purple and lilac inks 
very much. But they are not elegant ; they are not 
in fashion ; the best note-writers do not use them. 
The plain black ink, which gives the written charac- 
ters great distinctness, is the only fashionable medium. 

Every lady should study to acquire an elegant, free, 
and educated hand; there is nothing so useful, so sure 
to commend the writer everywhere, as such a chirog- 
raphy; while a cramped, poor, slovenly, uneducated, 
unformed handwriting is sure to produce the impres- 
sion upon the reader that those qualities are more or 
less indicative of the writer's character. The angu- 
lar English hand is at present the fashion, although 
less legible and not more beautiful than the round 
hand. We cannot enter into that great question as 
to whether or not handwriting is indicative of char- 
acter; but we hold that a person's notes are generally 
characteristic, and that a neat, flowing, graceful hand, 
and a clean sheet, free from blots, are always agree- 
able to the eye. The writer of notes, also, must care- 
fully discriminate between the familiar note and the 
note of ceremony, and should learn how to write both. 



COEEECT MODE OF WKTCDTG IN 7 

Custom demands that we begin all notes in the 
person, with the formula of " My dear Mrs. Smith/ 7 
and that we close with the expression-. "Yonis cor- 
dially," "Yours with much re_ :V Hie la 
of etiquette do not permit us to use numerate, 
4, 5, but demand that we write out iJ , ~ five. 
No abbreviations are allowed in a note to a fri; 
as, "S d be glad to see you;" one must write rat, 
"I should be glad to see you." The older let: 
writers were punctilious about writing the fire 
of the page below the last line of the page 
ing it. The date should follow the signing of the 
name. 

A great and very common mis: :: _ 

careless letter-writers is the confusion of the first and 
third persons; as a child would write, 'Misfl L 
Clark will be happy to come to dinner, bat I am g - 
ing somewhere else." This is, of course, wildly ign - 
rant and improper. 

A note in answer to an invitation ghoul 
in the third person, if the invitation be in the thi 
person. Xo abbreviations, no visible hurry, but an 
elaborate and finished ceremony should mark such 
epistles. For instance, an acceptane :ier 

invitation must be written in this form : 

Mr. and . 
have great pit 

intUatk 
M I M Sutherland 
for dinner on the ' - 

Lombard S 
I 



108 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

One lady in New York was known to answer a din- 
ner invitation simply with the words, " Come with 
pleasure." It is unnecessary to add that she was 
never invited again. 

It is impossible to give persons minute directions as 
to the style of a note, for that must be the outgrowth 
of years of careful education, training, and good men- 
tal powers. " To write a pretty note " is also some- 
what of a gift. Some young men and young girls 
find it very easy, others can scarcely acquire the 
power. It is, however, absolutely necessary to strive 
for it. 

In the first place, arrange your ideas, know what 
you want to say, and approach the business of writing 
a note with a certain thoughtf ulness. If it is neces- 
sary to write it hastily, summon all your powers of 
mind, and try to make it brief, intelligible, and com- 
prehensive. 

Above all things, spell correctly. A word badly 
spelled stands out like a blot on a familiar or a cere- 
monious note. 

Do not send a blurred, blotted, slovenly note to 
any one ; it will remain to call up a certain prejudice 
against you in the mind of the recipient. The fashion 
is not now, as it once was, imperative that a margin 
be left around the edge of the paper. People now 
write all over the paper, and thus abolish a certain 
elegance which the old letters undoubtedly possessed. 
But postage is a consideration, and all we can ask of 
the youthful letter-writers is that they will not cross 
their letters. Plaid letters are the horror of all peo- 
ple who have not the eyes of a hawk. 



CUSTOM OF SEALING NOTES STILL IX USE. 109 

Xo letter or note should be written on ruled paper. 
To do so is both inelegant and unfashionable, and sa- 
vors of the school-room. Every young person should 
learn to write without lines. 

The square cards are much used, and are quite large 
enough for the transmission of all that a lady ordi- 
narily wishes to say in giving or accepting an invita- 
tion. The day of the week and the address are often 
printed on the card. 

Square envelopes have also driven the long ones 
from the table of the elegant note -writer, and the 
custom of closing all ceremonious notes with sealing- 
wax is still adhered to by the most fastidious. It 
would be absurd, however, to say that it is nearly as 
common as the more convenient habit of moistening 
the gummed envelope, but it is far more elegant, 
and every young person should learn how to seal a 
note properly. To get a good impression from an en- 
graved stone seal, anoint it lightly with linseed-oil, to 
keep the wax from adhering; then dust it with rouge 
powder to take off the gloss, and press it quickly, but 
firmly, on the melted wax. 

Dates and numerical designations, such as the num- 
ber of a house, may be written in Arabic figures, but 
quantities should be expressed in words. Few abbre- 
viations are respectful. A married lady should al- 
ways be addressed with the prefix of her husband's 
Christian name. 

In this country, where we have no titles, it is the 
custom to abbreviate everything except the title of 
% * Reverend," which we always give to the clerg 
But it would be better if we made a practice of giving 



110 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

to each person his special title, and to all returned 
ambassadors, members of Congress, and members of 
the Legislature the title of " Honorable." The Ro- 
man Catholic clergy and the bishops of the Episcopal 
and Methodist churches should be addressed by their 
proper titles, and a note should be, like a salutation, 
infused with respect. It honors the writer and the 
person to whom it is written, while a careless letter 
may injure both. 



INCONGRUOUS STYLES OF DKESS. Ill 



CHAPTER XL 

INCONGRUITIES OF DRESS. 

We are all aware of the value of a costume, such 
as the dress of the Pompadour era : the Swiss peas- 
ant's bodice, the Normandy cap, the faldetta of the 

Maltese, the Hungarian national dress, the early Eng- 
lish, the Puritan square-cut, the Spanish mantilla, the 
Roman scarf and white cap — all these come before us ; 
and as we mention each characteristic garment there 
steps out on the canvas of memory a neat little figure, 
in which every detail from shoe to head-dress is har- 
monious. 

No one in his wildest dreams, however, could set 
out with the picture of a marquise, and top it off 
with a Normandy cap. Nor could he put powder on 
the dark hair of the jaunty little Hungarian. The 
beauty of these costumes is seen in each as a whole, 
and not in the parts separately. The marquise must 
wear pink or blue, or some light color; she must have 
the long waist, the square-cut corsage, the large hoop, 
the neat slipper, with rosette and high heel, the rouge 
and patches to supplement her powdered hair, or she 
is no marquise. 

The Swiss peasant must have the short skirt, the 
white chemisette, the black velvet bodice, the cross 
and ribbon, the coarse shoes, and the head-dress of 



112 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

her canton; the Normandy peasant her dark, striking 
dress, her high -heeled, gold -buckled shoe, and her 
white apron; the Hungarian her neat, military scarlet 
jacket, braided with gold, her scant petticoat and mili- 
tary boot, her high cap and feather. The dress of the 
English peasant, known now as the "Mother Hub- 
bard " hat and cloak, very familiar to the students of 
costumes as belonging to the countrywomen of Shak- 
speare's time, demands the short, bunched-up petticoat 
and high-heeled, high-cut shoes to make it perfect. 

We live in an age, however, when fashion, irrespec- 
tive of artistic principle, mixes up all these costumes, 
and borrows a hat here and a shoe there, the effect 
of each garment, diverted from its original intention, 
being lost. 

If " all things by their season seasoned are," so is 
all dress (or it should be) seasonable and comprehen- 
sive, congruous and complete. The one great secret 
of the success of the French as artists and magicians 
of female costume is that they consider the entire figure 
and its demands, the conditions of life and of luxury, 
the propriety of the substance, and the needs of the 
wearer. A lady who is to tread a velvet carpet or 
a parqueted floor does not need a wooden shoe ; she 
needs a satin slipper or boot. Yet in the modern 
drawing-room we sometimes see a young lady dan- 
cing in a heavy Balmoral boot which is only fitted for 
the bogs and heather of a Scotch tramp. The pres- 
ence of a short dress in a drawing-room, or of a long 
train in the street, is part of the general incongruity 
of dress. 

The use of the ulster and the Derby hat became 



ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH PELISSE. 113 

apparent on English yachts, where women learned to 
put themselves in the attitude of men, and very prop- 
erly adopted the storm jib; but, if one of those women 
had been told that she would, sooner or later, appear 
in this dress in the streets of London, she would have 
been shocked. 

In the days of the French emigration, when high- 
born ladies escaped on board friendly vessels in the 
harbor of Honfleur, many of them had on the loiig- 
waisted and full-skirted overcoats of their husbands, 
who preferred to shiver rather than endure the pain 
of seeing their wives suffer from cold. These figures 
were observed by London tailors and dress-makers, 
and out of them grew the English pelisse which after- 
wards came into fashion. On a stout Englishwoman 
the effect was singularly absurd, and many of the 
early caricatures give us the benefit of this incongru- 
ity ; for although a small figure looks well in a pelisse, 
a stout one never does. The Englishwoman who 
weighs two or three hundred pounds should wear a 
sacque, a shawl, or a loose cloak, instead of a tight- 
waisted pelisse. However, we are diverging. The 
sense of the personally becoming is still another branch 
of the great subject of dress. A velvet dress, for in- 
stance, demands for its trimmings expensive and real 
lace. It should not be supplemented by Breton or 
imitation Valenciennes. All the very pretty imitation 
laces are appropriate for cheap silks, poplins, summer 
fabrics, or dresses of light and airy material ; but if 
the substance of the dress be of the richest, the I; 
should be in keeping with it. 

So, also, in respect to jewellery: no cheap or imita- 



114 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

tion jewellery should be worn with an expensive dress. 
It is as foreign to good taste as it would be for a 
man to dress his head and body in the most fashion- 
able of hats and coats, and his legs in white duck. 
There is incongruity in the idea. 

The same incongruity applies to a taste for which 
our countrymen have often been blamed — a desire for 
the magnificent. A woman who puts on diamonds, 
real lace, and velvets in the morning at a summer 
watering-place is decidedly incongruous. Far better 
be dressed in a gingham, with Hamburg embroid- 
ery, and a straw hat with a handkerchief tied round 
it, now so pretty and so fashionable. She is then 
ready for the ocean or for the mountain drive, the 
scramble or the sail. Her boots should be strong, 
her gloves long and stout. She thus adapts Tier at- 
tire to the occasion. In the evening she will have 
an opportunity for the delicate boot and the trailing 
gauze or silk, or that deft combination of all the 
materials known as a " Worth costume." 

In buying a hat a woman should stand before a 
long Psyche glass, and see herself from head to foot. 
Often a very pretty bonnet or hat which becomes the 
face is absolutely dreadful in that wavy outline which 
is perceptible to those who consider the effect as a 
whole. All can remember how absurd a large figure 
looked in the round poke hat and the delicate Fan- 
chon bonnet, and the same result is brought about 
by the round hat. A large figure should be topped 
by a Gainsborough or Rubens hat, with nodding 
plumes. Then the effect is excellent and the propor- 
tions are preserved. 



COSTUME. 115 

Nothing can be more Incongruous, again, than a 
long, slim, aesthetic figure with a head-gear so dispro- 
portionately large as to suggest a Sandwich-Islander 
with his head-dress of mats. The " aesthetic craze " 
has, however, brought in one improvement in costume. 
It is the epauletted sleeve, which gives expansion to 
so many figures which are, unfortunately, too narrow. 
All physiologists are speculating on the growing nar- 
rowness of chest in the Anglo-Saxon race. It is sin- 
gularly apparent in America. To remedy this, some 
ingenious dress-maker devised a little puff at the top 
of the arm, which is most becoming. It is also well 
adapted to the " cloth of gold " costume of the days 
of Francis L, which modern luxury so much affects. 
It is a proud sort of costume, this nineteenth-century 
dress, and can well borrow some of the festive feat- 
ures of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, if 
they be not incongruous. TTe, like those rich nobles 
and prosperous burghers, have lighted on piping times 
of peace ; we have found a new India of our own ; 
our galleons come laden with the spoils of all coun- 
tries ; we are rich, and we are able to wear velvet 
and brocade. 

But we should be as true as they to the pro- 
prieties of dress. In the ancient burgher days the 
richest citizen was not permitted to wear velvet ; he 
had his own picturesque collar, his dark-cloth suit, his 
becoming hat. He had no idea of aping the patri- 
cian, with his long hat and feather. We are all patri- 
cians ; we can wear either the sober suit or the gay 
one ; but do let us avoid incongruity. 

A woman, in dressing herself for an evening of fes- 



116 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES, 

tivity, should remember that, from her ear-rings to her 
fan, all must suggest and convey the idea of luxury. 
A wooden fan is very pretty in the morning at a 
watering-place, but it will not do in the evening. 
None of the modern chatelaine arrangements, however 
ornamental, are appropriate for evening use. The 
chatelaine meant originally the chain on which the 
lady of the house wore her keys ; therefore its early 
association of usefulness remains : it is not luxurious 
in intention, however much modern fashion may have 
adorned it. 

Many a fashion has, it is true, risen from a low es- 
tate. The Order of the Garter tells of a monarch's 
caprice; the shoe -buckle and the horseshoe have 
crept up into the highest rank of ornaments. But 
as it takes three generations to make a gentleman, so 
does it take several decades to give nobility to low- 
born ornament. We must not try to force things. 

A part of the growing and sad incongruity of 
modern dress appears in the unavoidable awkward- 
ness of a large number of bouquets. A belle cannot 
leave the insignia of belledom at home, nor can she 
be so unkind as to carry Mr. Smith's flowers and ig- 8 
nore Mr. Brown's ; so she appears with her arms and 
hands full, to the infinite detriment of her dress and 
general effect. Some arrangement might be devised 
whereby such trophies could be dragged in the train 
of the high-priestess of fashion. 

A little reading, a little attention to the study of 
costume (a beautiful study, by-the-way), would soon 
teach a young woman to avoid the incongruous in 
dress. Some people have taste as a natural gift : they 



IGNORANCE OF DRESS-MAKERS. 117 

know how to dress from a consultation with their in- 
ner selves. Others, alas ! are entirely without it. The 
people who make hats and coats and dresses for us 
are generally without any comprehension of the his- 
tory of dress. To them the hat of the Roundhead 
and that of the Cavalier have the same meaning. To 
all people of taste and reading, however, they are very 
different, and all artists know that the costumes which 
retain their hold on the world have been preferred 
and have endured because of their fitness to con- 
ditions of climate and the grace and ease with which 
they were worn. 



118 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XII. 

DRESSING FOR DRIVING. 

No one who lias seen the coaching parade in New 
York can have failed to observe the extraordinary 
change which has come over the fashion in dress for 
this conspicuous occasion. Formerly ladies wore black 
silks, or some dark or low-toned color in woollen or 
cotton or silk ; and a woman who should have worn 
a white dress on top of a coach would, ten years ago, 
have been thought to make herself undesirably con- 
spicuous. 

Now the brightest colored and richest silks, orange, 
blue, pink, and lilac dresses, trimmed with lace flounces, 
dinner dresses, in fact — all the charming confections 
of Worth or Piugat — are freely displayed on the 
coach - tops, with the utmost graciousness, for every 
passer-by to comment on. The lady on the top of a 
coach without a mantle appears very much as she 
would at a full-dress ball or dinner. She then com- 
plains that sometimes ill-natured remarks float up 
from the gazers, and that the ladies are insulted. 
The fashion began at Longchamps and at Ascot, 
where, especially at the former place, a lady was 
privileged to sit in her victoria, with her lilac silk 
full ruffled to the waist, in the most perfect and aris- 
tocratic seclusion. Then the fast set of the Prince 



EXAGGERATED STYLES OF DRESS. 119 

of Wales took it up, and plunged into rivalry in dress- 
ing for the public procession through the London 
streets, where a lady became as prominent an object 
of observation as the Lord Mayor's coach. It has 
been taken up and developed in America until it has 
reached a climax of splendor and, if we may say so, 
inappropriateness, that is characteristic of the follow- 
ing of foreign fashions in this country. How can a 
white satin, trimmed with lace, or an orange silk, be 
the dress in which a lady should meet the sun, the 
rain, or the dust of a coaching expedition ? Is it the 
dress in which she feels that she ought to meet the 
gaze of a mixed assemblage in a crowded hotel or in 
a much frequented thoroughfare ? What change of 
dress can there be left for the drawing-room? 

We are glad to see that the Princess of Wales, 
whose taste seems to be as nearly perfect as may be, 
has determined to set her pretty face against this 
exaggerated use of color. She appeared recently in 
London, on top of a coach, in a suit of navy-blue 
flannel. Again, she and the Empress of Austria are 
described as wearing dark, neat suits of drap cVete, 
and also broadcloth dresses. One can see the delicate 
figures and refined features of these two royal beau- 
ties in this neat and inconspicuous dress, and, when 
they are contrasted with the flaunting pink and white 
and lace and orange dresses of those who are not- 
royal, how vulgar the extravagance in color becomes ! 

Our grandmothers travelled in broadcloth riding- 
habits, and we often pity them for the heat and the 
distress which they must have endured in the heavy, 
high -fitting, long- sleeved garments; yet we cannot 



120 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

but think they would have looked better on top of 
a coach than their granddaughters — who should re- 
member, when they complain of the rude remarks, 
that we have no aristocracy here whose feelings the 
mob is obliged to respect, and that the plainer their 
dress the less apt they will be to hear unpleasant 
epithets applied to them. In the present somewhat 
aggressive Amazonian fashion, when a woman drives 
a man in her pony phaeton (he sitting several inches 
below her), there is no doubt much audacity uninten- 
tionally suggested by a gay dress. A vulgar man, 
seeing a lady in white velvet, Spanish lace, a large 
hat — in what he considers a "loud" dress — does not 
have the idea of modesty or of refinement conveyed 
to his mind by the sight ; he is very apt to laugh, and 
to say something not wholly respectful. Then the 
lady says, "With how little respect women are treated 
in large cities, or at Newport, or at Saratoga !" Were 
she more plainly dressed, in a dark foulard or an in- 
conspicuous flannel or cloth dress, with her hat simply 
arranged, she would be quite as pretty and better 
fitted for the matter she has in hand, and very much 
less exposed to invidious comment. Women dress 
plainly enough when tempting the " salt-sea wave," and 
also when on horseback. Nothing could be simpler than 
the riding-habit, and yet is there any dress so becom- 
ing ? But on the coach they should not be too fine. 

Of course, women can dress as they please, but if 
they please to dress conspicuously they must be ready 
to take the consequences. A few years ago no lady 
would venture into the street unless a mantle or a 
scarf covered her shoulders. It was a lady-like pre- 



NO AID TO SHYNESS. 121 

caution. Then came the inglorious clays of the " tied- 
backs," a style of dress most unbecoming to the fig- 
ure, and now happily no more. This preposterous 
fashion had, no doubt, its influence on the manners 
of the age. 

Better far, if women would parade their charms, the 
courtly dresses of those beauties of Bird-cage Walk, 
by St. James's Park, where "Lady Betty Modish" 
was born — full, long, bouffant brocades, hair piled 
high, long and graceful scarfs, and gloves reaching 
to the elbow. Even the rouge and powder were a 
mask to hide the cheek which did or did not blush 
when bold eyes were fastened, upon it. Let us not 
be understood, however, as extolling these. The nine- 
teenth-century beauty mounts a coach with none of 
these aids to shyness. No suggestion of hiding any 
of her charms occurs to her. She goes out on the 
box seat without cloak or shawl, or anything but a 
hat on the back of her head and a gay parasol be- 
tween her and a possible thunder-storm. These ladies 
are not members of an acclimatization society. They 
cannot bring about a new climate. Do they not suffer 
from cold ? Do not the breezes go through them ? 
Answer, all ye pneumonias and diphtherias and rheu- 
matisms ! 

There is no delicacy in the hnmor with which the 
funny papers and the caricaturists treat these very 
exaggerated costumes. No delicacy is required. A 
change to a quieter style of dress would soon abate 
this treatment of which so many ladies complain. Let 
them dress like the Princess of Wales and the Empress 
of Austria, when in the conspicuous high-relief of the 



122 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

coach, and the result will be that ladies, married or 
single, will not be subjected to the insults of which 
so many of them complain, and of which the papers 
are full after every coaching parade. 

Lady riders are seldom obliged to complain of the 
incivility of a passer-by. Theirs are modest figures, 
and, as a general thing nowadays, they ride well. 
A lady can alight from her horse and walk about in 
a crowded place without hearing an offensive word : 
she is properly dressed for her exercise. 

Nor, again, is a young lady in a lawn-tennis suit as- 
sailed by the impertinent criticisms of a mixed crowd 
of by-standers. Thousands play at Newport, Sara- 
toga, and other places of resort, with thousands look- 
ing on, and no one utters a word of rebuke. The 
short flannel skirt and close Jersey are needed for 
the active runner, and her somewhat eccentric ap- 
pearance is condoned. It is not considered an exhi- 
bition or a show, but a good, healthy game of physi- 
cal exercise. People feel an interest and a pleasure 
in it. It is like the old-fashioned merry-making of 
the May-pole, the friendly jousts of neighbors on the 
common play-ground of the neighborhood, with the 
dances under the walnut-trees of sunny Provence. 
The game is an invigorating one, and even those who 
do not know it are pleased with its animation. We 
have hitherto neglected that gymnastic culture which 
made the Greeks the graceful people they were, and 
which contributed to the cultivation of the mind. 

Nobody finds anything to laugh at in either of these 
costumes ; but when people see a ball-dress mounted 
high on a coach they are very apt to laugh at it ; 



TIGHT LACING. 

and women seldom come home from a coaching par- 

ithout a tingling chef sling : shame 

because :: lent u] :n their dress and ap- 

. ranee. A young lady drove up, last summer. tc 

the Ocean House at Newport in a | my | haeton, ay 

- : ffen led I i gentlem 

"That girl has a very small waist, and she me 
- it."' Who was to lame - The young la 
g dressed in a very conspicuous manner: she fa 
d either mantle nor jack i 
li 1 mean that her waist should be Been. 

There is a growing object:;:- all >vei the w rid tc 
the hour-glass sha] i mcesc fa ahi mable, and we ought 
:_ welcome it as the best evidence tendency to- 

sensible form of di - 
lucive to health dis- 

charge of a woman's natural ind most important 
tctions. But if a woman laces herself into a rix- 
teen-inch belt^ and then clothes herself in bi : 
on. and bright solors, and makes herself conspicu- 
. she ah >uld not :". j .- .: to the fa :: 
her throw aside her mantl iment upon her 

charms in no measui . ~ * - no one 

We might sr-dressing men 

deprive themselves of the advantage of contrast in 
Lace, in particular, is for the house and for 
the full-dress dinn ..', So of the light, _ 

' have no fitness of fold or of texture 
the climbing of a coach. I: bright 
let ladies c] the merinos and nuns* veilings for 

coaching dresses] -till, let them dress in 



124 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

dark colors, in plain and inconspicuous dresses, which 
do not seem to defy both dust and sun and rain as 
well. On top of a coach they are far more exposed 
to the elements than when on the deck of a yacht. 

Nor, because the fast set of the Prince of Wales 
do so in London, is there any reason why American 
women should appear on top of a coach dressed in red 
velvet and white satin. Let them remember the fact 
that the Queen had placed Windsor Castle at the dis- 
posal of the Prince for his use during Ascot week, but 
that when she learned that two somewhat conspicuous 
American beauties were expected, she rescinded the 
loan and told the Prince to entertain his guests else- 
where. 



CONCERNING MOURNING. 125 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ETIQUETTE OF MOURNING. 

There is no possibility of touching upon the sub- 
ject of death and burial, and the conditions under 
which funerals should be conducted, without hurting 
some one's feelings. The Duke of Sutherland's attempt 
in England to do away with the dreadful shape which 
causes a shudder to all who have lost a friend — that 
of the coffin — was called irreverent, because he sug- 
gested that the dead should be buried in wicker-work 
baskets, with fern-leaves for shrouds, so that the poor 
clay might the more easily return to mother earth. 
Those who favor cremation suffer again a still more 
frantic disesteem ; and yet every one deplores the 
present gloomy apparatus and dismal observances of 
our occasions of mourning. 

Death is still to the most Christian and resigned 
heart a very terrible fact, a shock to all who live, 
and its surroundings, do what we will, are painful. 
"I smell the mould above the rose," says Hood, in 
his pathetic lines on his daughter's death. There- 
fore, we have a difficulty to contend with in the 
wearing of black, which is of itself, to begin with, 
negatory of our professed belief in the resurrection. 
We confess the logic of despair when we drape our- 
selves in it- gloomy folds. The dress which we 



126 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

should wear, one would think, might be blue, the 
color of the sky, or white, in token of light which the 
redeemed soul has reached. 

Custom, which makes slaves of us all, has decreed 
that we shall wear black, as a mark of respect to 
those we have lost, and as a shroud for ourselves, 
protesting against the gentle ministration of light 
and cheerfulness with which our Lord ever strives 
to reach us. This is one side of the question ; but, 
again, one word as to its good offices. A mourning 
dress does protect a woman while in deepest grief 
against the untimely gayety of a passing stranger. 
It is a wall, a cell of refuge. Behind a black veil 
she can hide herself as she goes out for business or 
recreation, fearless of any intrusion. 

The black veil, on the other hand, is most un- 
healthy : it harms the eyes and it injures the skin. 
As it rubs against the nose and forehead it is almost 
certain to cause abrasions, and often makes an annoy- 
ing sore. To the eyes enfeebled by weeping it is sure 
to be dangerous, and most oculists now forbid it. 

The English, from whom we borrow our fashion 
in funeral matters, have a limitation provided by so- 
cial law which is a useful thing. They now decree 
that crape shall only be worn six months, even for 
the nearest relative, and that the duration of mourn- 
ing shall not exceed a year. A wife's mourning for 
her husband is the most conventionally deep mourn- 
ing allowed, and every one who has seen an English 
widow will agree that she makes a " hearse" of herself. 
Bombazine and crape, a widow's cap, and a long, thick 
veil — such is the modern English idea. Some widows 



CONCERNING MOURNING. 127 

even have the cap made of black crepe lisse, but it 
generally of white. In this country a widow's first 

mourning dresses are covered almost entirely with 
crape, a most costly and disagreeable material, easily 
ruined by the dampness and dust — a sort of peniten- 
tial and self -mortifying dress, and very ugly and very 
expensive. There are now, however, other and more 
agreeable fabrics which also bear the dead black, lus- 
treless look which is alone considered respectful to the 
dead, and which are not so costly as crape, or so disa- 
greeable to wear. The Henrietta cloth and imperial 
serges are chosen for heavy winter dresses, while for 
those of less weight are tamise cloth, Bayonnaise, gren- 
adine, nuns' veiling, and the American silk. 

Our mourning usages are not overloaded with 
what may be called the pomp, pride, and circum- 
stance of woe which characterize English funerals. 
Indeed, so overdone are mourning ceremonies in 
England — what with the hired mutes, the nodding 
plumes, the costly coffin, and the gifts of gloves 
and bands and rings, etc. — that Lady Georgiana 
Milnor, of Nnnappleton, in York, a great friend of 
the Archbishop, wrote a book against the abuse, 
ordered her own body to be buried in a pine coffin, 
and forbade her servants and relatives to wear 
mourning. Her wishes were carried out to the 
letter. A black, cloth -covered casket with silver 
mountings is considered in the best taste, and the 
pall-bearers are given at most a white scarf and a pair 
of black gloves. Even this is not always done. At 
one time the traffic in these returned bands and 
was quite a fortune to the undertaker. 



128 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Mourning is very expensive, and often costs a fam- 
ily more than they can well afford ; but it is a sacri- 
fice that even the poorest gladly make, and those who 
can least afford it often wear the best mourning, so 
tyrannical is custom. They consider it — by what proc- 
ess of reasoning no one can understand, unless it be 
out of a hereditary belief that we hold in the heathen 
idea of propitiating the manes of the departed — an 
act of disrespect to the memory of the dead if the 
living are not clad in gloomy black. 

However, our business is with the etiquette of 
mourning. Widows wear deep mourning, consisting 
of woollen stuffs and crape, for about two years, and 
sometimes for life, in America. Children wear the 
same for parents for one year, and then lighten it 
with black silk, trimmed with crape. Half -mourning 
gradations of gray, purple, or lilac have been aban- 
doned, and, instead, combinations of black and white 
are used. Complimentary mourning is black silk 
without crape. The French have three grades of 
mourning — deep, ordinary, and half mourning. In 
deep mourning, woollen cloths only are worn ; in or- 
dinary mourning, silk and woollen ; in half mourning, 
gray and violet. An American lady is always shocked 
at the gayety and cheerfulness of French mourning. 
In France, etiquette prescribes mourning for a hus- 
band for one year and six weeks — that is, six months 
of deep mourning, six of ordinary, and six weeks of 
half mourning. For a wife, a father, or a mother, 
six months — three deep and three half mourning; 
for a grandparent, two months and a half of slight 
mourning; for a brother or a sister, two months, one 



MOURNING CUSTOMS. 129 

of which is in deep mourning ; for an uncle or an 
aunt, three weeks of ordinary black. In America, 
with no fixity of rule, ladies have been known to go 
into deepest mourning for their own relatives or those 
of their husbands, or for people, perhaps, whom they 
have never seen, and have remained as gloomy mon- 
uments of bereavement for seven or ten years, con- 
stantly in black ; then, on losing a child or a relative 
dearly loved, they have no extremity of dress left 
to express the real grief which fills their lives — no 
deeper black to go into. This complimentary mourn- 
ing should be, as in the French custom, limited to two 
or three weeks. The health of a delicate child has 
been known to be seriously affected by the constant 
spectacle of his mother in deep mourning. 

The period of a mourner's retirement from the world 
has been very much shortened of late. For one year 
no formal visiting is undertaken, nor is there any gay- 
ety in the house. Black is often worn for a husband or 
wife two years, for parents one year, and for brothers 
and sisters one year; a heavy black is lightened after 
that period. Ladies are beginning to wear a small 
black gauze veil over the face, and are in the habit of 
throwing the heavy crape veil back over the hat. It 
is also proper to wear a quiet black dress when going 
to a funeral, although this is not absolutely necessary. 

Friends should call on the bereaved family within 
a month, not expecting, of course, to see them. Kind 
notes expressing sympathy are most welcome to the 
afflicted from intimate friends, and gifts of flowers, 
or any testimonial of sympathy, are thoughtful and 
appropriate. 

9 



130 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Cards and note-paper are now put into mourning 
by those who desire to express conventionally their 
regret for the dead; but very broad borders of black 
look like ostentation, and are in undoubted bad taste. 
No doubt all these things are proper enough in their 
way, but a narrow border of black tells the story of loss 
as well as an inch of coal-black gloom. The fashion 
of wearing handkerchiefs which are made with a two- 
inch square of white cambric and a four-inch border 
of black may well be deprecated. A gay young 
widow at Washington was once seen dancing at a re- 
ception, a few months after the death of her soldier 
husband, with a long black veil on, and holding in her 
black-gloved hand one of these handkerchiefs, which 
looked as if it had been dipped in ink. " She should 
have dipped it in blood,' 1 said a by-stander. Under 
such circumstances we learn how much significance is 
to be attached to the grief expressed by a mourning 
veil. 

The mourning which soldiers, sailors, and courtiers 
wear has something pathetic and effective about it. 
A flag draped with crape, a gray cadet-sleeve with a 
black band, or a long piece of crape about the left 
arm of a senator, a black weed on a hat, these always 
touch us. They would even appear to suggest that 
the lighter the black, the more fully the feeling of 
the heart is expressed. If we love our dead, there is 
no danger that we shall forget them. " The custom- 
ary suit of solemn black " is not needed when we can 
wear it in our hearts. 

For lighter mourning jet is used on silk, and there is 
no doubt that it makes a very handsome dress. It is 



THE QUESTION OF BLACK GLOVES. 131 

a singular fact that there is a certain comfort to some 
people in wearing very handsome black. Worth, on 
being asked to dress an American widow whom he 
had never seen, sent for her photograph, for he said 
that he wished to see " whether she was the sort of 
woman who would relish a becoming black." 

Very elegant dresses are made with jet embroidery 
on crape — the beautiful soft French crape — but lace is 
never " mourning." Even the French, who have very 
light ideas on the subject, do not trim the most orna- 
mental dresses with lace during the period of even 
second mourning, except when they put the woollen 
yak lace on a cloth cloak or mantilla. During a very 
dressy half mourning, however, black lace may be 
worn on white silk; but this is questionable. Dia- 
mond ornaments set in black enamel are allowed even 
in the deepest mourning, and also pearls set in black. 
The initials of the deceased, in black brilliants or 
pearls, are now set in lockets and sleeve-buttons, or 
pins. Gold ornaments are never worn in mourning. 

White silk, embroidered with black jet, is used in 
the second stage of court mourning, with black gloves. 
Deep red is deemed in England a proper alternative 
for mourning black, if the wearer be called upon to 
go to a wedding during the period of the first year's 
mourning. At St. George's, Hanover Square, there- 
fore, one may often see a widow assisting at the wed- 
ding of a daughter or a son, and dressed in a superb 
red brocade or velvet, which, directly the wedding is 
over, she will discard for her solemn black. 

The question of black gloves is one which troubles 
all who are obliged to wear mourning through the 



132 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

heat of summer. The black kid glove is painfully 
warm and smutty, disfiguring the hand and soiling 
the handkerchief and face. The Swedish kid glove 
is now muck more in vogue, and the silk glove is 
made with such neatness and with such a number of 
buttons that it is equally stylish, and much cooler 
and more agreeable. 

Mourning bonnets are worn rather larger than or- 
dinary bonnets. In England they are still made of 
the old-fashioned cottage shape, and are very useful 
in carrying the heavy veil and in shading the face. 
The Queen has always worn this style of bonnet. 
Her widow's cap has never been laid aside, and w r ith 
her long veil of white falling down her back when 
she appears at court, it makes the most becoming 
dress that she has ever worn. For such a grief as 
hers there is something appropriate and dignified in 
her adherence to the mourning - dress. It fully ex- 
presses her sad isolation: for a queen can have no near 
friends. The whole English nation has sympathized 
with her grief, and commended her black dress. Nor 
can we criticise the grief w T hich causes a mother to 
wear mourning for her children. If it be any comfort 
to her to wrap herself in crape, she ought to do so. 
The world has no right to quarrel with those who 
prefer to put ashes on their heads. 

But for the mockery, the conventional absurdities, 
and the affectations which so readily lend themselves 
to caricature in the name of mourning, no condemna- 
tion can be too strong. There is a ghoul-like ghastli- 
ness in talking about "ornamental," or "'becoming," 
or " complimentary " mourning. 



MANNER OF CONDUCTING FUNERALS. 133 

People of sense, of course, manage to dress without 
going to extremities in either direction. We see many 
a pale-faced mourner whose quiet mourning-dress tells 
the story of bereavement without giving us the pain- 
ful feeling that crape is too thick, or bombazine too 
heavy, for comfort. Exaggeration is to be deprecated 
in mourning as in everything. 

The discarding of mourning should be effected by 
gradations. It shocks persons of good taste to see a 
light-hearted young widow jump into colors, as if she 
had been counting the hours. If black is to be dis- 
pensed with, let its retirement be slowly and grace- 
fully marked by quiet costumes, as the feeling of 
grief, yielding to the kindly influence of time, is 
shaded off into resignation and cheerfulness. We do 
not forget our dead, but we mourn for them with a 
feeling which no longer partakes of anguish. 

Before a funeral the ladies of a family see no one 
but the most intimate friends. The gentlemen, of 
course, must see the clergyman and officials who 
manage the ceremony. It is now the almost universal 
practice to carry the remains to a church, where the 
friends of the family can pay the last tribute of re- 
spect without crowding into a private house. Pall- 
bearers are invited by note, and assemble at the house 
of the deceased, accompanying the remains, after the 
ceremonies at the church, to their final resting-place. 
The nearest lady friends seldom go to the church or 
to the grave. This is, however, entirely a matter of 
feeling, and they can go if they wish. After the fu- 
neral only the members of the family return to the 
house, and it is not expected that a bereaved wife or 



134 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

mother will see any one other than the members of 
her family for several weeks. 

The preparations for a funeral in the house are com- 
mitted to the care of an undertaker, who removes the 
furniture from the drawing-room, filling all the space 
possible with camp-stools. The clergyman reads the 
service at the head of the coffin, the relatives being 
grouped around. The body, if not disfigured by dis- 
ease, is often dressed in the clothes worn in life, and 
laid in an open casket, as if reposing on a sofa, and all 
friends are asked to take a last look. It is, however, 
a somewhat ghastly proceeding to try to make the 
dead look like the living. The body of a man is usu- 
ally dressed in black. A young boy is laid out in his 
every-day clothes, but surely the young of both sexes 
look more fitly clad in the white cashmere robe. 

The custom of decorating the eofim with flowers 
is a beautiful one, but has been, in large cities, 
so overdone, and so purely a matter of money, that 
now the request is generally made that no flowers 
be sent. 

In England a lady of the court wears, for her par- 
ent, crape and bombazine (or its equivalent in any 
lustreless cloth) for three months. She goes nowhere 
during that period. After that she wears lustreless 
silks, trimmed with crape and jet, and goes to court 
if commanded. She can also go to concerts without 
violating etiquette, or to family weddings. After 
six months she again reduces her mourning to black 
and white, and can attend the "drawing-room" or 
go to small dinners. For a husband the time is ex- 
actly doubled, but in neither case should the widow 



ETIQUETTE OF MOURNING. 135 

be seen at a ball, a theatre, or an opera until after one 
year has elapsed. 

In this country no person in mourning for a parent, 
a child, a brother, or a husband, is expected to be seen 
at a concert, a dinner, a party, or at any other place of 
public amusement, before three months have passed. 
After that one may be seen at a concert. But to go 
to the opera, or a dinner, or a party, before six months 
have elapsed, is considered heartless and disrespectful. 
Indeed, a deep mourning-dress at such a place is an 
unpleasant anomaly. If one choose, as many do, not 
to wear mourning, then they can go unchallenged to 
any place of amusement, for they have asserted their 
right to be independent ; but if they put on mourning 
they must respect its etiquette. By many who sor- 
row deeply, and who regard the crape and solemn 
dress as a mark of respect to the dead, it is deemed 
almost a sin for a woman to go into the street, to 
drive, or to walk, for two years, without a deep crape 
veil over her face. It is a common remark of the 
censorious that a person who lightens her mourning 
before that time "did not care much for the deceased;" 
and many people hold the fact that a widow or an or- 
phan wears her crape for two years to be greatly to 
her credit. 

Of course, no one can say that a woman should not 
wear mourning all her life if she choose, but it is a 
serious question whether in so doing she does not in- 
jure the welfare and happiness of the living. Chil- 
dren, as we have said, are often strangely affected by 
this shrouding of their mothers, and men always dis- 
like it. 



136 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Common - sense and common decency, however, 
should restrain the frivolous from engaging much in 
the amusements and gayeties of life before six months 
have passed after the death of any near friend. If 
they pretend to wear black at all, they cannot be 
too scrupulous in resj>ecting the restraint which it 
imposes. 



DIFFICULTIES OF EXPRESSION. 137 



CHAPTER XIV. 

LETTERS OF COXDOLEXCE. 

Probably no branch of the epistolary art has ever 
given to friendly hearts so much perplexity as that 
which has to do with writing to friends in affliction. 
It is delightful to sit down and wish anybody joy; to 
overflow with congratulatory phrases over a favorable 
bit of news; to say how glad you are that your friend 
is engaged or married, or has inherited a fortune, has 
written a successful book, or has painted an immortal 
picture. Joy opens the closet of language, and the 
gems of expression are easily found; but the fountain 
of feeling being chilled by the uncongenial atmosphere 
of grief, by the sudden horror of death, or the more 
terrible breath of dishonor or shame, or even by the 
cold blast of undeserved misfortune, leaves the in- 
dividual sympathizer in a mood of perplexity and of 
sadness which is of itself a most discouraging frame 
of mind for the inditing of a letter. 

And yet we sympathize with our friend : we desire 
to tell him so. We want to say, " My friend, your 
grief is my grief; nothing can hurt you that does not 
hurt me. I cannot, of course, enter into all your feel- 
ings, but to stand by and see you hurt, and remain 
unmoved myself, is impossible." All this we wish to 

y; but how shall Ave say it that our words may not 



138 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

hurt him a great deal more than he is hurt already? 
How shall we lay our hand so tenderly on that sore 
spot that we may not inflict a fresh wound? How 
can we say to a mother who bends over a fresh grave, 
that we regret the loss she has sustained in the death 
of her child ? Can language measure the depth, the 
height, the immensity, the bitterness of that grief ? 
What shall we say that is not trite and commonplace 
— even unfeeling? Shall we be pagan, and say that 
"whom the gods love die young," or Christian, and 
remark that "God does not willingly afflict the chil- 
dren of men?" She has thought of that, she has 
heard it, alas! often before — but too often, as she 
thinks now. 

Shall we tell her what she has lost — how good, how 
loving, how brave, how admirable was the spirit 
which has just left the flesh ? Alas ! how well she 
knows that ! How her tears well up as she remembers 
the silent fortitude, the heroic patience under the 
pain that was to kill ! Shall we quote ancient phi- 
losophers and modern poets ? They have all dwelt 
at greater or less length upon death and the grave. 
Or shall we say, in simple and unpremeditated words, 
the thoughts which fill our own minds ? 

The person who has to write this letter may be a 
ready writer, who finds fit expression at the point 
of his pen, and who overflows with the language of 
consolation — such a one needs no advice ; but to 
the hundreds who do need help we would say that 
the simplest expressions are the best. A distant 
friend, upon one of these occasions, wrote a letter 
as brief as brief might be, but of its kind altogether 



INFELICITOUS SYMPATHY. 139 

perfect. It ran thus : " I have heard of your great 
grief, and I send you a simple pressure of the hand." 
Coming from a gay and volatile person, it had for 
the mourner great consolation ; pious quotations, 
and even the commonplaces of condolence, would 
have seemed forced. Undoubtedly those persons 
do us great good, or they wish to, who tell us to 
be resigned — that we have deserved this affliction; 
that we surfer now, but that our present sufferings 
are nothing to what our future sufferings shall be ; 
that we are only entering the portals of agony, and 
that every day will reveal to us the magnitude of 
our loss. Such is the formula which certain persons 
use, under the title of "letters of condolence." It 
is the wine mixed with gall which they gave our 
Lord to drink ; and as He refused it, so may we. 
There are, no doubt, persons of a gloomy and a re- 
ligious temperament combined who delight in such 
phrases ; who quote the least consolatory of the 
texts of Scripture ; who roll our grief as a sweet 
morsel under their tongues ; who really envy the po- 
sition of chief mourner as one of great dignity and 
considerable consequence; who consider crape and 
bombazine as a sort of royal mantle conferring dis- 
tinction. There are many such people in the world. 
Dickens and Anthony Trollope have put them into 
novels — solemn and ridiculous Malvolios ; they exist 
in nature, in literature, and in art. It adds a new 
terror to death when we reflect that such persons will 
not fail to make it the occasion of letter-writing. 

But those who write to us strongly and cheerfully, 
who do not dwell so much on our grief as on our 



140 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

remaining duties — they are the people who help us. 
To advise a mourner to go out into the sun, to resume 
his work, to help the poor, and, above all, to carry on 
the efforts, to emulate the virtues of the deceased — 
this is comfort. It is a very dear and consoling thing 
to a bereaved friend to hear the excellence of the de- 
parted extolled, to read and re-read all of the precious 
testimony which is borne by outsiders to the saintly 
life ended — and there are few so hard-hearted as not to 
find something good to say of the dead : it is the im- 
pulse of human nature ; it underlies all our philosophy 
and our religion; it is the "stretching out of a hand," 
and it comforts the afflicted. But what shall we say 
to those on whom disgrace has laid its heavy, defiling 
hand? Is it well to write to them at all? Shall 
we not be mistaken for those who prowl like jackals 
round a grave, and will not our motives be misun- 
derstood ? Is not sympathy sometimes malice in dis- 
guise ? Does not the phrase " I am so sorry for you !" 
sometimes sound like " I am so glad for myself ?" 
Undoubtedly it does ; but a sincere friend should not 
be restrained, through fear that his motive may be 
mistaken, from saying that he wishes to bear some 
part of the burden. Let him show that the unhappy 
man is in his thoughts, that he would like to help, 
that he would be glad to see him, or take him out, 
or send him a book, or at least write him a letter. 
Such a wish as this will hurt no one. 

Philosophy — some quaint and dry bit of old Seneca, 
or modern Rochefoucauld — has often helped a strug- 
gling heart when disgrace, deserved or undeserved, 
has placed the soul in gyves of iron. 



THE "VIA FELICE." 141 

Sympathetic persons, of narrow minds and imper- 
fect education, often have the gift of being able to say 
most consolatory things. Irish servants, for instance, 
rarely hurt the feelings of a mourner. They burst out 
in the language of Nature, and, if it is sometimes gro- 
tesque, it is almost always comforting. It is the edu- 
cated and conscientious person who finds the writing 
of a letter of condolence difficult. 

Perhaps much of our dread of death is the result of 
a false education, and the wearing of black may after 
all be a mistake. At the moment when we need bright 
colors, fresh flowers, sunshine, and beauty, we hide 
ourselves behind crape veils and make our garments 
heavy with ashes ; but as it is conventional it is in 
one way a protection, and is therefore proper. Xo 
one feels like varying the expressions of a grief 
which has the Anglo - Saxon seriousness in it, the 
Scandinavian melancholy of a people from whom 
Nature hides herself behind a curtain of night. To 
the sunny and graceful Greek the road of the dead 
was the Via Felice ; it was the happy way, the gate 
of flowers; the tombs were furnished as the houses 
were, with images of the beloved, and the veriest tri- 
fles which the deceased had loved. One wonders, as 
the tomb of a child is opened on the road out of 
Tanagra, near Athens, and the toys and hobby-horse 
and little shoes are found therein, if, after all, that 
father and mother were not wiser than we who, like 
Constance, "stuff out his vacant garments with his 
form." Is there not something quire unenlightened 
in the persistence with which we connect death with 
gloom? 



142 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Our correspondents often ask us when a letter of 
condolence should be written? As soon as possible. 
Do not be afraid to intrude on any grief. It is gen- 
erally a welcome distraction, to even the most mor- 
bid mourner, to read a letter ; and those who are so 
stunned by grief as not to be able to write or to read 
will always have some willing soul near them who 
will read and answer for them. 

The afflicted, however, should never be expected 
to answer letters. They can and should receive the 
kindest and the most prompt that their friends can 
indite. Often a phrase on which the writer has built 
no hope may be the airy bridge over which the sorrow- 
ing soul returns slowly and blindly to peace and resig- 
nation. Who would miss the chance, be it one in ten 
thousand, of building such a bridge ? Those who have 
suffered and been strong, those whom we love and re- 
spect, those who have the honest faith in human nature 
which enables them to read aright the riddle of this 
strange world, those who by faith walk over burning 
ploughshares and dread no evil, those are the people 
w^ho write the best letters of condolence. They do not 
dwell on our grief, or exaggerate it, although they are 
evidently writing to us with a lump in the throat and 
a tear in the eye — they do not say so, but we feel it. 
They tell us of the certain influence of time, which 
will change our present grief into our future joy. 
They say a few beautiful words of the friend whom 
we have lost, recount their own loss in him in a few 
fitting words of earnest sympathy which may carry 
consolation, if only by the wish of the writer. They 
beg of us to be patient. God has brought life and im- 



herder's dying words. 143 

mortality to light through death, and to those whom 
"he has thought worthy to endure," this thought may 
ever form the basis of a letter of condolence. 

"Give me," said the dying Herder, "a great 
thought, that I may console myself with that." It is 
a present of no mean value, a great thought ; and if 
every letter of condolence could bear with it one 
broad phrase of honest sympathy it would be a blessed 
instrumentality for carrying patience and resignation, 
peace and comfort, into those dark places where the 
sufferer is eating his heart out with grief, or where 
Rachel " weeps for her children, and will not be com- 
forted, because they are not." 



144 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XV. 

CHAPERONS AND THEIR DUTIES. 

It is strange that the Americans, so prone to imitate 
British customs, have been slow to adopt that law of 
English society which pronounces a chaperon an indis- 
pensable adjunct of every unmarried young woman. 

The readers of " Little Dorrit " will recall the ex- 
ceedingly witty sketch of Mrs. General, who taught 
her young ladies to form their mouths into a lady-like 
pattern by saying " papa, potatoes, prunes, and prism." 
Dickens knew very little of society, and cared very 
little for its laws, and his ladies and gentlemen were 
pronounced in England to be as great failures as his 
Little Nells and Dick Swivellers were successes; but 
he recognized the universality of chaperons. His 
portrait of Mrs. General (the first luxury which Mr. 
Dorrit allowed himself after inheriting his fortune) 
shows how universal is the necessity of a chaperon in 
English society, and on the Continent, to the proper 
introduction of young ladies, and how entirely their 
" style " depends upon their chaperon. Of course Dick- 
ens made her funny, of course he made her ridiculous, 
but he put her there. An American novelist would 
not have thought it worth mentioning, nor would an 
American papa with two motherless daughters have 
thought it necessary, if he travelled with them, to 
have a chaperon for his daughters. 



THE AMERICAN MAMMA. 145 

Of course, a mother is the natural chaperon of her 
daughters, and if she understand her duties and the 
usages of society there is nothing further to be said. 
But the trouble is that many American mothers are 
exceedingly careless on this point. We need nrt 
point to the wonderful Mrs. Miller — Daisy's mother — 
in Henry James, Jr.'s, photograph of a large class of 
American matrons — a woman who loved her dau^h- 
ter, knew how to take care of her when she was ill, 
but did not know in the least how to take care of her 
when she was well; who allowed her to go about with 
young men alone, to "get engaged," if so she pleased, 
and who, arriving at a party after her daughter had 
appeared, rather apologized for coming at all. All 
this is notoriously true, and comes of our crude civ- 
ilization. It is the transition state. Until we learn 
better, we must expect to be laughed at on the Pin- 
cian Hill, and we must expect English novelists to 
paint pictures of us which we resent, and French 
dramatists to write plays in which we see ourselves 
held up as savages. 

Europeans have been in the habit of taking care of 
young girls, as if they were the precious porcelain 
of human clay. The American mamma treats her 
beautiful daughter as if she were a very common 
piece of delft indeed, and as if she could drift down 
the stream of life, knocking all other vessels to pieces, 
but escaping injury to herself. 

Owing to the very remarkable and strong sense of 
propriety which American women innately possess — 
their truly healthy love of virtue, the absence of any 
morbid suspicion of wrong — this rule has worked bet- 

10 



146 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

ter than any one would have dared hope. Owing, 
also, to the exceptionally respectful and chivalrous 
nature of American men, it has been possible for a 
young lady to travel unattended from Maine to Geor- 
gia, or anywhere within the new geographical limits 
oT our social growth. Mr. Howells founded a romance 
upon this principle, that American women do not need 
a chaperon. Yet we must remember that all the 
black sheep are not killed yet, and we must also re- 
member that propriety must be more attended to as 
we cease to be a young and primitive nation, and as 
we enter the lists of the rich, cultivated, luxurious 
people of the earth. 

Little as we may care for the opinion of foreigners 
we do not wish our young ladies to appear in their 
eyes in a false attitude, and one of the first necessities 
of a proper attitude, one of the first demands of a 
polished society, is the presence of a chaperon. She 
should be a lady old enough to be the mother of her 
charge, and of unexceptionable manner. She must 
know society thoroughly herself, and respect its laws. 
She should be above the suspicion of reproach in 
character, and devoted to her work. In England there 
are hundreds of widows of half -pay officers— well-born, 
well-trained, well-educated women — who can be hired 
for money, as was Mrs. General, to play this part. 
There is no such class in America, but there is al- 
most always a lady who will gladly perform the task of 
chaperoning motherless girls without remuneration. 

It is not considered proper in England for a wid- 
owed father to place an unmarried daughter at the 
head of his house without the companionship of a 



THE DIFFICULTIES OF A CHAPERON". 14 7 

resident chaperon, and there are grave objections to its 
being done here. We have ail known instances where 
such liberty has been very bad for young girls, and 
where it has led to great scandals which the presence 
of a chaperon would have averted. 

The duties of a chaperon are very hard and unre- 
mitting, and sometimes very disagreeable. She must 
accompany her young lady everywhere; she must sit 
in the parlor when she receives gentlemen ; she must 
go with her to the skating-rink, the ball, the party, the 
races, the dinners, and especially to theatre parties ; she 
must preside at the table, and act the part of a mother, 
so far as she can ; she must watch the characters of 
the men who approach her charge, and endeavor to 
save the inexperienced girl from the dangers of a bad 
marriage, if possible. To perform this feat, and not to 
degenerate into a Spanish duenna, a dragon, or a Mrs. 
General — who was simply a fool — is a very dim cult 
task. 

No doubt a vivacious American girl, with all her in- 
herited hatred of authority, is a troublesome charge. All 
young people are rebels. They dislike being watched 
and guarded. They have no idea what Hesperidean 
fruit they are, and they object to the dragon decidedly. 

But a wise, well-tempered woman can manage the 
situation. If she have tact, a chaperon will add very 
much to the happiness of her young charge. She will 
see that the proper men are introduced; that her young 
lady is provided with a partner for the german ; that 
she is asked to nice places; that she goes well dressed 
and properly accompanied; that she gives the return 
ball herself in handsome stvle. 



148 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

"I owe," said a wealthy widower in New York, 
whose daughters all made remarkably happy mar- 
riages — "I owe all their happiness to Mrs. Constant, 
whom I was so fortunate as to secure as their chaperon. 
She knew society (which I did not), as if it were in 
her pocket. She knew exactly what girls ought to 
do, and she was so agreeable herself that they never 
disliked having her with them. She was very rigid, 
too, and would not let them stay late at balls; but 
they loved and respected her so much that they never 
rebelled, and now they love her as if she were really 
their mother." 

A woman of elegant manners and of charming char- 
acter, who will submit to the slavery — for it is little 
less — of being a chaperon, is hard to find; yet every 
motherless family should try to secure such a person. 
In travelling in Europe, an accomplished chaperon 
can do more for young girls than any amount of fort- 
une. She has the thing they want — that is, knowledge. 
With her they can go everywhere — to picture-galler- 
ies, theatres, public and private balls, and into society, 
if they wish it. It is "etiquette" to have a chaperon, 
and it is the greatest violation of it not to have one. 

If a woman is protected by the armor of work, she 
can dispense with a chaperon. The young artist goes 
about her copying unquestioned, but in society, with 
its different laws, she must be under the care of an 
older woman than herself. 

A chaperon is indispensable to an engaged girl. 
The mother, or some lady friend, should always ac- 
company a young fiancee on her journeys to the vari- 
ous places of amusement and to the watering-places. 



AN INTELLIGENT CHAPERON. 149 

Nothing is more vulgar in the eyes of 'Mir modern 
society than for an engaged couple to travel together 
or to go to the theatre unaccompanied, as was the 
primitive custom. This will, we know, shock many 
Americans, and be called a "foolish following of for- 
eign fashions." But it is true ; and, if it were only 
for the "looks of the thing." it is more decent, more 
elegant, and more correct for the young couple to 
be accompanied by a chaperon until married. Soci- 
ety allows an engaged girl to drive with her 
in an open carriage, but i: does not approve of his 
taking her in a close carriage to an evening party. 

There are non-resident cha] :: >ns whe \: : most pop- 
ular and most useful. Thus, one mamma or elderly 
lady may chaperon a number of young ladies to a din- 
ner, or a drive on a coach, a sail down the bay, or a 
ball at TV est Point. This lady looks after all her 
young charge-, and attends to their propriety and 
their happiness. She is the guardian angel, for the 
moment, of their conduct. I: is a care which young 
men always admire and respect — this of a kind, well- 
bred chaperon, who does not r it s 
of her charges to run away with them. 

■ chaperon, if an intelligent woman, and with the 
sort of social talent which a chaperon ought to have, 
is the best friend of a family of shy girls. She brings 
them forward, and places them in a position in which 
they can enjoy society: for there is a great deal of 
tact required in a large city to make a retiring girl 
enjoy herself. Society demands a certain amount of 
_. which only the social expert ni 
this thecl a should 1 d. There are some 



150 MANSERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

women who have a social talent which is simply Na- 
poleonic. They manage it as a great general does his 
corps de bataUle. 

Again, there are bad chaperons. A flirtatious mar- 
ried woman who is thinking of herself only, and who 
takes young girls about merely to enable herself to 
lead a gay life (and the world is full of such women), is 
worse than no chaperon at all. She is not a protection 
to the young lady, and she disgusts the honorable 
men who would like to approach her charge. A very 
young chaperon, bent on pleasure, who undertakes to 
make respectable the coaching party, but who has 
no dignity of character to impress upon it, is a very 
poor one. Many of the most flagrant violations of 
propriety, in what is called the fashionable set, have 
arisen from this choice of young chaperons, which is 
a mere begging of the question, and no chaperonage 
at all. 

Too much champagne is drunk, too late hours are 
kept, silly stories are circulated, and appearances are 
disregarded by these gay girls and their young chap- 
erons ; and yet they dislike very much to see them- 
selves afterwards held up to ridicule in the pages 
of a magazine by an Englishman, whose every sen- 
timent of propriety, both educated and innate, has 
been shocked by their conduct. 

A young Frenchman who visited America a few 
years ago formed the worst judgment of American 
women because he met one alone at an artist's studio. 
He misinterpreted the profoundly sacred and correc- 
tive influences of art. It had not occurred to the 
lady that if she went to sce/H picture she would be 



AX INJUDICIOUS CHOICE. 151 

suspected of wishing to see the artist. Still, the 
fact that such a mistake could be made should render 
lad fol of even the appearance of evil. 

A chaperon should in her turn remember that ahe 
must not open a letter. She must not exercise an un- 
illance. She must not s vpecA hei charge. 
All that sort c_ \age is always out"". - 

ted. The n accessfnl chaperons are those w 

love their young charges, respect them, try to be in 
;- ■_;•-.- way what the mother would have been. Of 
itions of this sort are open to many 
drawbacks on both sides, but it is not impossible that 
it may be an agreeable relation, if both parties e:: ;- 
a little tact, 
•electing a chaperon for .. youi g charge, let par- 
ents or guardians be very particular as to the past 
history of the lady. H she has ever been talked about, 
ever Buffered the I ::.: : ;:: of flirt or coquet:,. 

do not think of placing her in that position. Clul 
have long memories, and more than one 

young heiress has been imperilled by an injudicic 
choice of a chaperon. If any worn aid have a 

ible char it should be 

the chaperon. It will tell against her charge if she 
have not. Certain needy women who have been la- 
dies, and who precariously attach to society through 
their families, cdways seeking for some young 

heiress. These women are very poor chaperc i 
should be a~- 

This business of chaperonage > nt which de- 

mands attention on the part of careless Ameri 
mothers. N us of her dutv 



152 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

in this respect. It does not imply that she doubts 
her daughter's honor or truth, or that she thinks she 
needs watching, but it is proper and respectable and 
necessary that she should appear by her daughter's 
side in society. The world is full of traps. It is im- 
possible to be too careful of the reputation of a young 
lady, and it improves the tone of society vastly if an 
elegant and respectable woman of middle age accom- 
panies every young party. It goes far to silence the 
ceaseless clatter of gossip ; it is the antidote to scan- 
dal ; it makes the air clearer ; and, above all, it im- 
proves the character, the manners, and elevates the 
minds of the young people who are so happy as to 
enjoy the society and to feel the authority of a culti- 
vated, wise, and good chaperon. 



QUESTION OF A MAID OF THIRTY-FIVE. 153 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ETIQUETTE FOB ELDEBLY GIRLS. 

A brisk: correspondent writes to us that she finds 
our restrictions as to the etiquette which single wom- 
en should follow somewhat embarrassing. Being now 
thirty-five, and at the head of her fathers house, with 
no intention of ever marrying, she asks if she re- 
quires a chaperon ; if it is necessary that she should 
observe the severe self-denial of not entering an ar- 
tist's studio without a guardian angel ; if she must 
never allow a gentleman to pay for her theatre tick- 
ets ; if she must, in short, assume a matron's place in 
the world, and never enjoy a matron's freedom. 

From her letter we can but believe that this young 
lady of thirty-five is a very attractive person, and 
that she does "not look her age." Still, as she is at 
the head of her fathers house, etiquette does yield a 
point and allows her to judge for herself as to the 
proprieties which must bend to her. Of course with 
every year of a woman's life after twenty -five she 
becomes less and less the subject of chaperonage. 
For one thing, she is better able to judge of the 
world and its temptations; in the second pla 
certain air which may not be less winning, but which 
is certainly more mature, has replaced the wild grace 
of a giddy girlhood. She has, with the assumption of 



154 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

years, taken on a dignity which, in its way, is fully 
the compensation for some lost bloom. Many people 
prefer it. 

But we must say here that she is not yet, in Euro- 
pean opinion, emancipated from that guardianship 
which society dispenses with for the youngest widow. 
She must have a " companion " if she is a rich woman; 
and if she is a poor one she must join some party of 
friends when she travels. She can travel abroad with 
her maid, but in Paris and other Continental cities a 
woman still young-looking had better not do this. 
She is not safe from insult nor from injurious suspi- 
cion if she signs herself " Miss " Smith, and is with- 
out her mother, an elderly friend, a companion, or 
party. 

In America a woman can go anywhere and do al- 
most anything without fear of insult. But in Europe, 
where the custom of chaperonage is so universal, she 
must be more circumspect. 

As to visiting an artist's studio alone, there is in 
art itself an ennobling and purifying influence which 
should be a protection. But we must not forget that 
saucy book by Maurice Sand, in which its author says 
that the first thing he observed in America was that 
women (even respectable ones) went alone to artists' 
studios. It would seem wiser, therefore, that a lady, 
though thirty-five, should be attended in her visits to 
studios by a friend or companion. This simple ex- 
pedient " silences envious tongues," and avoids even 
the remotest appearance of evil. 

In the matter of paying for tickets, if a lady of 
thirty-five wishes to allow a gentleman to pay for her 



OBLIGATIONS A LADY SHOULD AVOID. 155 

admission to picture-galleries and theatres she has an 
indisputable right to do so. But we are not fighting 
for a right, only defining a law of etiquette, when we 
say that it is not generally allowed in the best so- 
ciety, abroad or here. In the case of young girls it i3 
quite unallowable, but in the case of a lady of thirty- 
five it may be permitted as a sort of camaraderie, as 
one college friend may pay for another. The point 
is, however, a delicate one. Men, in tho freedom of 
their clubs, recount to each other the clever expedi- 
ents which many women of society use to extort from 
them boxes for the opera and suppers at Delmonico's. 
A woman should remember that it may sometimes be 
very inconvenient to young men who are invited by 
her to go to concerts and theatres to pay for these 
pleasures. Many a poor fellow who has become a de- 
faulter has to thank for it the lady who first asked 
him to take her to Delmonico's to supper. He was 
ashamed to tell her that he was poor, and he stole that 
he might not seem a churl. 

Another phase of the subject is that a lady in per- 
ring a gentleman to expend money for her pleas- 
ures assumes an obligation to him which time and 
chance may render oppressive. 

With an old friend, however, one whose claim 
to friendship is well established, the condition; are 
changed. In his case there can be no question of 

ligation, and a woman may accept unhesitatin 
any of those small attentions and kindnesses whi 
friendly feeling may prompt him to offer to her. 

Travelling alone with a gentleman escort 
one time allowed in the West. A Kentucky woman 



156 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

of that historic period, " before the war," would not 
have questioned the propriety of it, and a Western 
man of to-day still has the desire to pay everything, 
everywhere, "for a lady." 

The increase in the population of the Western States 
and the growth of a wealthy and fashionable society 
in the large towns have greatly modified this spirit 
of unwise chivalry, and such customs are passing away 
even on the frontier. Mr. Howells's novel, " The Lady 
of the Aroostook," has acquainted American readers 
with the unkind criticism to which a young lady who 
travels in Europe without a chaperon is subjected, and 
we believe that there are few mammas who would 
desire to see their daughters in the position of Miss 
Lydia Blood. 

"An old maid," as our correspondent playfully 
calls herself, may do almost anything without viola- 
ting etiquette, if she consents to become a chaperon, 
and takes with her a younger person. Thus an aunt 
and niece can travel far and wide ; the position of an 
elder sister is always dignified; the youthful head of 
a house has a right to assert herself — she must do it 
— therefore etiquette bows to her (as "nice customs 
courtesy to great kings"). There is very much in the 
appearance of a woman. It is a part of the injustice 
of nature that some people look coquettish who are not 
so. Bad taste in dress, a high color, a natural Sow of 
spirits, or a loud laugh have often caused a very good 
woman to be misinterpreted. Such a woman should 
be able to sit in judgment upon herself; and remem- 
bering that in a great city, at a crowded theatre, or 
at a watering-place, judgments must be hasty and su- 



UNBECOMING DEPORTMENT. 157 

perficial, she should tone down her natural exuber- 
ance, and take with her a female companion who is 
of a different type from herself. Calm and cold 
Puritanical people may not be more respectable than 
the fresh-colored and laughing " old maids " of thir- 
ty-five, but they look more so, and in this world 
women must consult appearances. An elderly girl 
must even think how she looks. A woman who at a 
watering-place dresses conspicuously, wears a peignoir 
to breakfast, dyes her hair, or looks as if she did, ties 
a white blond veil over her locks and sits on a hotel 
piazza, showing her feet, may be the best, the most 
cultivated woman in the house, but a superficial ob- 
server will not think so. In the mind of every pass- 
er-by will lurk the feeling that she lacks the first 
grace of womanhood, modesty — and in the criticism 
of a crowd there is strength. A man passing such 
a person, and contrasting her with modestly dressed 
and unobtrusive ladies, would naturally form an un- 
favorable opinion of her ; and were she alone, and 
her name entered on the books of the house as "Hiss" 
Smith, he would not be too severe if he thought her 
decidedly eccentric, and certainly "bad style." If, 
however, "Miss" Smith were very plain and quiet, 
and dressed simply and in good taste, or if she sat on 
the sands looking at the sea, or attended an invalid 
or a younger friend, then Miss Smith might be as in- 
dependent as she pleased: she would suffer from no 
injurious comments. Even the foreigner, who does 
not believe in the eccentricities of the English rm 
would have no word to say against her. A good-look- 
ing elderly girl might say, "There is, then, a premium 



153 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

on ugliness ;" but that we do not mean. Handsome 
women can conduct themselves so well that the breath 
of reproach need not and does not touch them, and 
ugly women may and do sometimes gain an unde- 
s e r v e d r ep r o a eh . 

There are some people who are born with what 
we call, for want of a better name, a pinchbeck air. 
Their jewellery never looks like real gold; their man- 
ner is always bad ; they have the faux air of fashion, 
not the real one. Such people, especially if single, 
receive many a snub which they do not deserve, and 
to a woman of this style a companion is almost nec- 
essary. Fortunately there are almost always lico 
women who can join forces in travelling or in liv- 
ing together, and the independence of such a couple is 
delightful. We have repeated testimony in English 
literature of the pleasant lives of the Ladies of Llan- 
gollen, of the lives of Miss Jewsbury and Lady Mor- 
gan, and of the model sisters Berry. In our own 
country we have almost abolished the idea that a com- 
panion is necessary for women of talent who are phy- 
sicians or artists or musicians ; but to those who are 
still in the trammels of private life we can say that 
the presence of a companion need not destroy their 
liberty, and it may add very much to their respecta- 
bility and happiness. There is, no doubt, a great 
pleasure in the added freedom of life which comes 
to an elderly girl. " I can wear a velvet dress now," 
said an exceedingly handsome woman on her thir- 
tieth birthday. In England an unmarried woman of 
fifty is called "Mrs." if she prefers that title. So 
many delightful women are late in loving, so many 



OBSERVATION IX REGARD TO OLD MAIDS. 150 

are true to some buried love, so many are " elderly 
girls " from choice, and from no neglect of the strong- 
er sex, that to them should be accorded all the respect 
which is supposed to accrue naturally to the married. 
•• It takes a very superior woman to be an old maid," 
said Miss Sedgwick. 



1G0 MAKNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

new-year's calls. 

"Le jour de Pan," as the French call the first day 
of January, is indeed the principal day of the year 
to those who still keep np the custom of calling and 
receiving calls. But in New York it is a custom 
which is in danger of falling into desuetude, owing 
to the size of the city and the growth of its popu- 
lation. There are, however, other towns and "much 
country " (as the Indians say) outside of New York, 
and there are still hospitable boards at which the hap- 
py and the light-hearted, the gay and the thoughtful, 
may meet and exchange wishes for a happy New- 
Year. 

To those who receive calls we would say that it is 
well, if possible, to have every arrangement made two 
or three days before New- Year's, as the visiting be- 
gins early — sometimes at eleven o'clock — if the caller 
means to make a goodly day. A lady should have her 
hair dressed for the day when she rises, and if her 
dress be not too elaborate she should put it on then, 
so that she may be in the drawing-room when the 
first visitor arrives. In regard to the question of dress, 
we should say that for elderly ladies black satin or 
velvet, or any of the combination dresses so fashiona- 
ble now, with handsome lace, and Swedish gloves of 



STYLE OF DRESSING ON NEW-YBAB S DAY. 161 

pearl or tan color (not white kids; these are decidedly 
rococo, and not in fashion), would be appropriate. A 
black satin, well made, and trimmed with beaded pas- 
sementerie, is perhaps the handsomest dress that could 
be worn by any one. Brocaded silk, plain gros grain, 
anything that a lady would wear at the wedding re- 
ception of her daughter is suitable, although a plain 
dress is in better taste. 

For young ladies nothing is so pretty as a dress of 
light cashmere and silk, cut high at the throat. These 
dresses, irr the very pretty tints worn now, are ex- 
tremely becoming, warm-looking, and appropriate for 
a reception, when the door is being often opened. 
White dresses of thick silk or cashmere, trimmed 
around the neck with lace, are also very elegant. In 
all countries young married women are allowed to be 
as magnificent as a picture of Marie de Medici, and 
can wear on New-Year's day rose -colored and white 
brocaded silks, with pearl trimmings, or plain ciel 
blue, or prawn-colored silk over white, or embossed 
velvet, or what they please, so that the dress is cut 
high, and has sleeves to the elbow. Each lady should 
have near her an ermine cloak, or a small camers-hair 
shawl in case of draughts. It is not good taste to 
wear low-necked or sleeveless dresses during the day- 
time. They are worn by brides on their wedding-day 
sometimes, but at receptions or on Xew-Year's day 
scarcely ever. 

While much magnificence is permissible, still a plain 
black or dark silk dress, if well made, with fresh ruf- 
fles at neck and wrists, is quite as proper as anything 
else, and men generally admire it more. But when 

11 



162 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

lady has several daughters to receive with her, she 
should study the effect of her rooms, and dress the 
young ladies in prettily contrasting colors. This may 
be cheaply done by using the soft, fine merinoes, 
which are to be had in all the delicate and fashion- 
able shades. Short dresses of this material are much 
used ; but noAV that imported dresses are so easily ob- 
tained, a mother with many daughters to dress cannot 
do better than buy costumes similar to those worn by 
economical French ladies on their jour de Pan. One 
article of dress is de rigeur. With whatever style of 
costume gloves must be worn. 

A lady who expects to have many calls, and who 
wishes to offer refreshments, should have hot tea and 
coffee and a bowl of punch on a convenient table; or, 
better still, a silver kettle filled with bouillon standing 
in the hall, so that a gentleman coming in or going 
out can take a cup of it unsolicited. If she lives in 
an English basement house, this table can be in the 
lower dining-room. In a house three rooms deep the 
table and all the refreshments can be in the usual 
dining-room or in the upper back parlor. Of course, 
her " grand spread" can be as gorgeous as she pleases. 
Hot oysters, salads, boned turkey, quail, and hot terra- 
pin, with wines ad libitum, are offered by the wealthy; 
but this is a difficult table to keep in order when ten 
men call at one o'clock, and forty at four, and none 
between. The best table is one which is furnished 
with boned turkey, jellied tongues, and pates, sand- 
wiches, and similar dishes, with cake and fruit as dec- 
orative additions. The modern and admirable adjunct 
of a spirit-lamp under a teakettle keeps the bouillon, 



COURTESIES TO VISITOR. 1C3 

tea, and coffee always hot, and these, with the teacups 
necessary to serve them, should be on a small table 
at one side. A maid-servant, neatly dressed, should 
be in constant attendance on this table, and a man- 
servant or two will be needed to attend the door and 
to wait at table. 

The man at the door should have a silver tray or 
card-basket in which to receive the cards of visitors. 
If a gentleman is not known to the lady of the house, 
he sends in his card ; otherwise he leaves it with the 
waiter, who deposits it in some receptacle where it 
should be kept until the lady has leisure to examine 
the cards of all her guests. If a gentleman is calling 
on a young lady, and is not known to the hostess, he 
sends in his card to the former, who presents him to 
the hostess and to all the ladies present. If the room 
is full, an introduction to the hostess only is neces- 
sary. If the room is comparatively empty, it is much 
kinder to present a gentleman to each lady, as it tends 
to make conversation general. As a guest is about 
to depart, he should be invited to take some refresh- 
ment, and be conducted towards the dining-room for 
that purpose. This hospitality should never be urged, 
as man is a creature who dines, and is seldom willing 
to allow a luncheon to spoil a dinner. In a country 
neighborhood, however, or after a long walk, a visitor 
i< almost always glad to break his fast and enjoy a 
pickled oyster, a sandwich, or a cup of bouillon. 

The etiquette of New-Year's day commands, per- 
emptorily, that a gentleman shall not be asked to take 
off his overcoat nor to be relieved of his hat. lie will 
probably prefer to wear his overcoat, and to carry hi^ 



164 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

hat in his hand during his brief visit. If he wishes to 
dispose of either, he will do so in the hall ; but on that 
point he is a free moral agent, and it is not a part of 
the duty of a hostess to suggest what he shall do with 
his clothes. 

Many letters come to us asking "What subjects 
should be talked about during a New- Year's call." 
Alas ! we can only suggest the weather and the good 
wishes appropriate to the season. The conversation 
is apt to be fragmentary. One good mot was evolved 
a few years ago, when roads were snowy and ways 
were foul. A gentleman complained of the mud and 
the dirty streets. " Yes," said the lady, "but it is 
very bright overhead." " I am not going that way," 
replied the gentleman. 

A gentleman should not be urged to stay when he 
calls. He has generally but five minutes in which to 
express a desire that old and pleasant memories shall 
be continued, that new and cordial friendships shall 
be formed, and after that compliment, which every 
well-bred man pays a lady, "How remarkably well 
you are looking to-day !" he w T ishes to be off. 

In France it is the custom for a gentleman to wear 
a dress-coat when calling on a great public function- 
ary on New- Year's day, but it is not so in America. 
Here he should wear the dress in which he would 
make an ordinary morning visit. When he enters a 
room he should not remove his gloves, nor should he 
say, as he greets his hostess, " Excuse my glove." He 
should take her gloved hand in his and give it a 
cordial pressure, according to our pleasant American 
fashion. When leaving, the ceremony is very brief — 



DECLINE OF AN OLD CUSTOM. 1G5 

simply, "Good -morning," or "Good -evening," as the 

case may be. 

It is proper for gentlemen to call late in the evening 
of New-Year's day, and calls are made during the en- 
suing evenings by people who are otherwise occupied 
in the daytime. If the family are at dinner, or the 
lady is fatigued with the day's duties, the servant 
must say at the door that Mrs. desires to be ex- 
cused. He must not present the card to her, and thus 
oblige her to send to her visitor a message which 
might be taken as a personal affront. But she must 
have the servant instructed to refuse all at certain 
hours ; then none can be offended. 

Many ladies in Xew York are no longer ''at home" 
on New- Year's day ; and when this is the case a bas- 
ket is tied at the door to receive cards. They do this 
because so many gentlemen have given up the custom 
of calling that it seems to be dying out, and all their 
preparations for a reception become a hollow mockery. 
How many weary women have sat with novel in hand 
and luncheon-table spread, waiting for the callers who 
did not come ! The practice of sending cards to gen- 
tlemen, stating that a lady would be at home on Xew- 
Year's day, has also very much gone out of fashion, 
owing to the fact that gentlemen frequently did not 
respond to them. 

It is, however, proper that a married lady return- 
ing to her home after a long absence in Europe, or 
one who has changed her residence, or who is liv- 
ing at a hotel or boarding-house (or who is visiting 
friends), should send her card to those gentlemen 
whom she wishes to receive. It must be remembered 



166 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES* 

that many gentlemen, generally those no longer young, 
still like very much the fashion of visiting on New- 
Year's day, and go to see as many people as they can 
in a brief winter's sunshine. These gentlemen deplore 
the basket at the door, and the decadence of the old 
custom in New York. Family friends and old friends, 
those whom they never see at any other time, are to 
be seen — or they should be seen, so these old friends 
think — on New-Year's day. 

A personal call is more agreeable than a card. Let 
a gentleman call, and in person, or take no notice 
of the day. So say the most trustworthy authori- 
ties, and their opinion has an excellent foundation of 
common-sense. 

Could we only go back to the old Dutch town 
where the custom started, where all animosities were 
healed, all offences forgotten, on New-Year's day, 
when the good Dutch housewives made their own 
cakes and spiced the loving-cup, when all the women 
stayed at home to receive and all the men called, 
what a different New- Year's day we should enjoy in 
New York. Nowadays, two or three visitors arrive 
before the hostess is ready to receive them ; then one 
comes after she has appeared, vanishes, and she re- 
mains alone for two hours ; then forty come. She 
remembers none of their names, and has no rational 
or profitable conversation with any of them. 

But for the abusers of New-Year's day, the pretend- 
ers who, with no right to call, come in under cover of 
the general hospitality of the season — the bores, who 
on this day, as on all days, are only tiresome — we have 
no salve, no patent cure. A hostess must receive them 



ABUSE OF VE-'-YEAE's DAY. 

with th atm si suavity, and be as amiable and agree- 
able -Vie. 

New-Yeai'fl day is a very brilliant one at Washing- 
ton. All the world calls on the President at twelve 
Lock; the liplomats in full dress, officers of the 
army and navy in full uniform, and the other people 
grandly ittired. Later, the hea 1 Lepartmen 

rs. judges, ere., receive the lesser lights 
sty. 
In Paris the same etiquette is >l served, and every 
clerk calls on his chi 

In a small city or village etiquette manag: 
and ladies have only to let it be known that they will 
. with hot soffee and oysters, to receive the 
; kind I — . te be- 

cause they really wish t visit, to ex] resfi good- 

will, and t ask foi that ex ahip 

which our r I Anglo-Saxon nature- are so prone 

to withh I L 

In New York a few years ago the temperance ] 
pie made a great oslaught >n ladies who invited 
;ng men to drink on New-Year's day. It was s 
much disorder and intei : 

from fear of causing *s brother to sin. many have 
oished the familiar punch -bowl. In a number of 
well-known houses in New York no luncheon is of- 
fered, and a cup r coffee and a sandwich 
is the usual refreshment in the richest and most stylish 
houses. It will be seen, therefore, that it is a day 
largest liberty. There are no longer any sumptu 
laws ; but it is ssible to say why ladies of the 
diion in N< w V rk -till make it a 



168 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

gala-day. The multiplicity of other entertainments, 
the unseen yet all-powerful influence of fashion, these 
things mould the world insensibly. Yet in a thousand 
homes, thousands of cordial hands will be extended on 
the great First of January, and to all of them we wish 
a Happy New Year. 



IMPROPER APPLICATION OF THE WORD. 169 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

MATINEES AND SOIREES. 

A matinee in America means an afternoon per- 
formance at the theatre of a play or opera. In 
Europe it has a wider significance, any social gather- 
ing before dinner in France being called a matinee, 
as any party after dinner is called a soiree. 

The improper application of another foreign word 
was strikingly manifested in the old fashion of calling 
the President's evening receptions levees. The term 
" levee," as originally used, meant literally a king's 
getting up. When he arose, and while he was dress- 
ing, such of his courtiers as were privileged to ap- 
proach him at this hour gathered in an anteroom — 
waiting to assist at his toilet, to wish him good- 
morning, or perhaps prefer a request. In time this 
morning gathering grew to be an important court 
ceremonial, and some one ignorant of the meaning of 
the word named President Jackson's evening recep- 
tions "the President's levees." So with the word 
matinee. First used to indicate a day reception at 
court, it has now grown to mean a day performance 
at a theatre. Sometimes a lady, bolder than her 
neighbors, issues an invitation for "a matinee dan- 
saute" or "a matinee musleale" but this descriptive 
style is not common. 



170 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

There are many advantages in a morning party. It 
affords to ladies who do not go to evening receptions 
the pleasure of meeting informally, and is also a 
well-chosen occasion for introducing a new pianist 
or singer. 

For a busy woman of fashion nothing can he more 
conveniently timed than a matinee, which begins at 
two and ends at four or half past. It does not inter- 
fere with a five-o'clock tea or a drive in the park, nor 
unfit her for a dinner or an evening entertainment. 
Two o'clock is also a very good hour for a large 
and informal general lunch, if a lady wishes to avoid 
the expense, formality, and trouble of a " sit-down" 
lunch. 

While the busy ladies can go to a matinee, the 
busy gentleman cannot ; and as men of leisure in 
America are few, a morning entertainment at a thea- 
tre or in society is almost always an assemblage of 
women. To avoid this inequality of sex, many ladies 
have their matinees on some one of the national holi- 
days — Washington's Birthday, Thanksgiving, or Dec- 
oration-day. On these occasions a matinee, even in 
busy New York, is well attended by gentlemen. 

When, as sometimes happens, a prince, a duke, an 
archbishop, an author of celebrity, a Tom Hughes, a 
Lord Houghton, a Dean Stanley, or some descendant 
of our French allies at Yorktown, comes on a visit 
to our country, one of the most satisfactory forms of 
entertainment that we can offer to him is a morning 
reception. At an informal matinee we may bring to 
meet him such authors, artists, clergymen, lawyers, 
editors, statesmen, rich and public- spirited citizens, 



THE ruiMAUV BUSINESS OF 80CIETY. 171 

ami beautiful and cultivated women o( society, as we 
may be fortunate enough to know. 

The primary business of society is to bring together 
the various elements of which it is made up — its 
strongest motive should be to lighten up the momen- 
tous business of life by an easy and friendly inter- 
course and interchange of ideas. 

But if we hope to bring about us men o( mind and 
distinction, our object must be not only to be amused 
but to amuse. 

To persuade those elderly men who are maintaining 
the great American name at its present high place in 
the Pantheon of nations to spend a eouple of hours 
at a matinfeyWe must offer some tempting bait as an 
equivalent. A lady who entertained Dean Stanley 
said that she particularly enjoyed her own mctiinfo 
given for him, because through his name she for the 
first time induced the distinguished clergy of New 
York to come to her house. 

Such men are not tempted by the frivolities o( a 
fashionable soeial life that lives by its vanity, its 
excitement, its rivalry and flirtation. Not that all 
fashionable society is open to such reproach, but its 
tendency is to lightness and emptiness; and we rare- 
ly tind really valuable men who seek it. Therefore- 
a lady who would make her house attractive to the 
best society must offer it something higher than 
that to which wo may give the generic title fashion. 
Dress, music', dancing, supper, are delightful acces- 
saries — they are ornaments and Stimulants, not req- 
uisites. For a good society wo need men and wom- 
en who are "good company," as they say in England 



172 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

— men and women who can talk. Nor is the advan- 
tage all on one side. The free play of brain, taste, 
and feeling is a most important refreshment to a 
man who works hard, whether in the pulpit or in 
Wall Street, in the editorial chair or at the dull 
grind of authorship. The painter should wash his 
brushes and strive for some intercourse of abiding 
value with those whose lives differ from his own. 
The woman who works should also look upon the 
divertissements of society as needed recreation, fruit- 
ful, may be, of the best culture. 

On the other hand, no society is perfect without the 
elements of beauty, grace, taste, refinement, and lux- 
ury. We must bring all these varied potentialities 
together if Ave would have a real and living social 
life. For that brilliant thing that we call society is 
a finely-woven fabric of threads of different sizes and 
colors of contrasting shades. It is not intrigue, or 
the display of wealth, or morbid excitement that 
must bind together this social fabric, but sympathy, 
that pleasant thing which refines and refreshes, and 
"knits up the ravelled sleeve of care," and leaves 
us strong for the battle of life. 

And in no modern form of entertainment can we 
better produce this finer atmosphere, this desirable 
sympathy between the world of fashion and that of 
thought, than by matinees, when given under fa- 
vorable circumstances. To be sure, if we gave one 
every day it would be necessary, as we have said, to 
dispense with a large number of gentlemen; but the 
occasional matinee is apt to catch some very good 
specimens of the genus homo, and sometimes the best 



A SUBTLE QUESTION. 173 

specimens. It is proper to offer a very substantial 
buffet, as people rarely lunch before two o'clock, and 
will be glad of a bit of bird, a cup of bouillon, or a 
leaf of salad. It is much better to offer such an en- 
tertainment earlier than the five- o'clock tea, at which 
hour people are saving their appetites for dinner. 

A soiree is a far more difficult affair, and calls for 
more subtle treatment. It should be, not a ball, but 
what was formerly called an "evening party." It 
need not exclude dancing, but dancing is not its ex- 
cuse for being. It means a very bright conversazione, 
or a reading, or a musicale, with pretty evening dress 
(not necessarily ball dress), a supper, and early hours. 
Such, at least, was its early significance abroad. 

It has this advantage in New York, that it does 
attract gentlemen. They like very much the easy-go- 
ing, early-houred soiree. We mean, of course, those 
gentlemen who no longer care for balls, and if aris- 
tocracy is to be desired, "the rule of the best," at 
American entertainments, all aspirants for social dis- 
tinction should try to propitiate those men who are 
being driven from the ballroom by the insolence and 
pretension of the lower elements of fashionable soci- 
ety. In Europe, the very qualities which make a man 
great in the senate, the field, or the chamber of com- 
merce, give him a corresponding eminence in the so- 
cial world. Many a gray-mustached veteran in Paris 
leads the german. A senator of France aspires to 
appear well in the boudoir. With these men social 
dexterity is a requisite to success, and is cultivated as 
a duty. It is not so here, for the two great factors 
of success in America, wealth and learning, do not 



174 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

always fit a man for society, and still less does soci- 
ety adapt itself to them. 

The soiree, if properly conducted, is an entertain- 
ment to which can be brought the best elements of 
our society — elderly, thoughtful, and educated men. 
A lady should not, however, in the matter of dress, 
confound a soiree with a concert or reception. It is 
the height of impropriety to w^ear a bonnet to the 
former, as has been done in New York, to the ever- 
lasting disgust of the hostess. 

When a hostess takes the pains to issue an invita- 
tion to a soiree a week or a fortnight before it is to 
occur, she should be repaid by the careful dressing 
and early arrival of her guests. It may be proper to 
go to an evening reception in a bonnet, but never to 
a soiree or an evening party. 

There is no doubt that wealth has become a power 
in American society, and that we are in danger of feel- 
ing that, if we have not wealth, we can give neither 
matinees nor soirees; but this is a mistake. Of course 
the possession of wealth is most desirable. Money is 
power, and when it is well earned it is a noble pow- 
er ; but it does not command all those advantages 
which are the very essence of social intercourse. It 
may pamper the appetite, but it does not always feed 
the mind. There is still a corner left for those that 
have but little money. A lady can give a matinee 
or a soiree in a small house with very little expendi- 
ture of money; and if she has the inspiration of the 
model entertainer, every one whom she honors w T ith 
an invitation will flock to her small and unpretending 
menage. There are numbers of people in our large 



THE UXPEETEXDIXG SOIREE. 1 , 5 

cities who can give great balls, dazzle the eye, confuse 
I delight the senses, drown us in a sensuous lux- 
ury ; but how few there are who, in a back street 
and in a humble house, light that lamp by which the 
Misses Berry summoned to their little parlor the clev- 
erest and best people ! 

The elegant, the unpretentious, the quiet 
which the woman of fashion shall welcome the ' \ - 
• and the artist, the aristocrat who is at the top 
of the social tree and the millionaire who reached his 
culmination yesterday, would seem to be that V \ ' 
Tkule for which all people have been sighing ever 
since society was first thought of. There are some 
Americans who are so foolish ae ( affect the pride 
of the hereditary aristocracies, and who have some 
fancied traditional standard by which they think to 
keep their blue blood pure. A Id grandfather 

who had talent, or patriotism, or broad views of stat - 
manship, " who did the state some service," is a rela- 
tion to be proud of, but his descendants should t 
care to show, by some more personal excellence than 
that of a social exclusiveness, th reciation of his 

honesty and ability. What our grandfathers wer . 
thousand new-comers now are. They made their way 

— the early American men — untrammelled by eb ffl 

raints; they arrived at wealth and distinct' 

- -ial eminence by their own merits ; they toiled : 
the money which buys for their grandsons purple and 
tine linen. And could they see the pure and per: 

>b who now sometim - the name which they 

left so unsullied, they would be ex a 
ashamed. Of course, a certain exclusiv ist 



176 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

mark all our matinees and soirees; they would fail of 
the chief element of diversion if we invited every- 
body. Let us, therefore, make sure of the aesthetic 
and intellectual, the sympathetic and the genial, and 
sift out the pretentious and the impure. The rogues, 
the pretenders, the adventurers who push into the 
penetralia of our social circles are many, and it is to 
the exclusion of such that a hostess should devote 
herself. 

It is said that all women are born aristocrats, and 
it is sometimes said in the same tone with which 
the speaker afterwards adds that all women are born 
fools. A woman, from her finer sense, enjoys luxury, 
fine clothing, gorgeous houses, and all the refinements 
that money can buy; but even the most idle and lux- 
urious and foolish woman desires that higher luxury 
which art and intelligence and delicate appreciation 
can alone bring; the two are necessary to each other. 
To a hostess the difficulty of entertaining in such a 
manner as to unite in a perfect whole the financiers, 
the philosophers, the cultivated foreigners, the people 
of fashion, the sympathetic and the artistic is very 
great ; but a hostess may bring about the most ge- 
nial democracy at the modern matinee or soiree if she 
manages properly. 



DINNER-TABLE OF TWENTY TEARS AGO. 177 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE MODERN DINNER-TABLE. 

The appointments of the modern dinner-table strik- 
ingly indicate that growth of luxury of which the 
immediate past has been so fruitful. Up to twenty 
years ago a dinner, even in the house of a merchant 
prince, was a plain affair. There was a white table- 
cloth of double damask ; there were large, handsome 
napkins; there was a rich service of solid silver, and 
perhaps some good china. Flowers, if used at all, 
were not in profusion ; and as for glasses, only a 
few of plain white, or perhaps a green or a red one 
for claret or hock, were placed at the side of the plate. 

Of course there were variations and exceptions to 
this rule, but they were few and far between. One 
man, or often one maid-servant, waited at the table; 
and, as a protection for the table-cloth, mats were 
used, implying the fear that the dish brought from 
the top of the kitchen-range, if set down, would leave 
a spot or stain. All was on a simple or economical 
plan. The grand dinners were served by caterers, 
who sent their men to wait at them, which led to the 
remark, often laughed at as showing English stupid- 
ity, made by the Marquis of Hartington when he vis- 
ited New York at the time of our war. As he looked 
at old Peter Van Dyck and his colored assistants, 

12 



178 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

whom he had seen at every house at which he had 
dined, he remarked, "How much all your servants 
resemble each other in America!" It was really an 
unintentional sarcasm, but it might well have sug- 
gested to our nouveaux riches the propriety of having 
their own trained servants to do the work of their 
houses instead of these outside men. A degree of 
elegance which we have not as a nation even yet 
attained is that of having a well - trained corps of 
domestic servants. 

A mistress of a house should be capable of teach- 
ing her servants the method of laying a table and at- 
tending it, if she has to take, as we commonly must, 
the uneducated Irishman from his native bogs as a 
house-servant. If she employs the accomplished and 
well-recommended foreign servant, he is too apt to 
disarrange her establishment by disparaging the scale 
on which it is conducted, and to engender a spirit of 
discontent in her household. Servants of a very high 
class, who can assume the entire management of af- 
fairs, are only possible to people of great wealth, and 
they become tyrants, and wholly detestable to the 
master and mistress after a short slavery. One New 
York butler lately refused to wash dishes, telling his 
mistress that it would ruin his finger-nails. But this 
man was a consummate servant, who laid the table and 
attended it, with an ease and grace that gave his mis- 
tress that pleasant feeling of certainty that all would 
go well, which is the most comfortable of all feelings 
to a hostess, and without which dinner-giving is an- 
noyance beyond all words. 

The arrangement of a dinner-table and the waiting 



MODERN DINNER-TABLE. 179 

upon it are the most important of all the duties of a 
servant or servants, and any betrayal of ignorance, 
any nervousness or noise, any accident, are to be de- 
plored, showing as they do want of experience and 
lack of training. 

No one wishes to invite his friends to be uncom- 
fortable. Those dreadful dinners which Thackeray de- 
scribes, at which people with small incomes tried to 
rival those of large means, will forever remain in 
the minds of his readers as among the most painful 
of all revelations of sham. We should be real first, 
and ornamental afterwards. 

In a wealthy family a butler and two footmen are 
employed, and it is their duty to work together in 
harmony, the butler having control. The two foot- 
men lay the table, the butler looking on to see that it 
is properly done. The butler takes care of the wine, 
and stands behind his mistress's chair. Where only 
one man is employed, the whole duty devolves upon 
him, and he has generally the assistance of the parlor- 
maid. Where there is only a maid-servant, the mis- 
tress of the house must see that all necessary arrange- 
ments are made. 

The introduction of the extension -table into our 
long, narrow dining-rooms has led to the expulsion 
of the pretty round-table, which is of all others the 
most cheerful. The extension -table, however, is al- 
most inevitable, and one of the ordinary size, with 
two leaves added, will seat twelve people. The pub- 
lic caterers say that every additional leaf gives room 
for four more people, but the hostess, in order to avoid 
crowding, would be wise if she tested this with her 



180 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

dining-room chairs. New York dinner-parties are 
often crowded— sixteen being sometimes asked when 
the table will only accommodate fourteen. This is a 
mistake, as heat and crowding should be avoided. In 
country houses, or in Philadelphia, Boston, Washing- 
ton, and other cities where the dining-rooms are or- 
dinarily larger than those in a New York house, the 
danger of crowding, of heat, and want of ventilation, 
is more easily avoided; but in a gas-lighted, furnace- 
heated room in New York the sufferings of the diners- 
out are sometimes terrible. 

The arrangements for the dinner, whether the party 
be ten or twenty, should be the same. Much has been 
said about the number to be invited, and there is an 
old saw that one should not invite "fewer than the 
Graces nor more than the Muses." This partiality to 
uneven numbers refers to the difficulty of seating a 
party of eight, in which case, if the host and hostess 
take the head and foot of the table, two gentlemen and 
two ladies will come together. But the number of the 
Graces being three, no worse number than that could 
be selected for a dinner-party ; and nine would be 
equally uncomfortable at an extension -table, as it 
would be necessary to seat three on one side and four 
on the other. Ten is a good number for a small din- 
ner, and easy to manage. One servant can wait on 
ten people, and do it well, if well-trained. Twenty- 
four people often sit down at a modern dinner-table, 
and are well served by a butler and two men, though 
some luxurious dinner-givers have a man behind each 
chair. This, however, is ostentation. 

A lady, if she issue invitations for a dinner of ten 



STYLE OF DIKING IN AMERICA. 181 

or twenty, should do so a fortnight in advance, and 
should have her cards engraved thus : 

Mr. and Mrs. James JSorman 

request the pleasure of 

Mr. and Mrs. John Br oxen's company at dinner 

on Thursday, February eighth, 

at seven o'clock. 

These engraved forms, on note-paper, filled up with 
the necessary time and date, are very convenient and 
elegant, and should be answered by the fortunate re- 
cipient immediately, in the most formal manner, and 
the engagement should be scrupulously kept if ac- 
cepted. If the subsequent illness or death of relatives, 
or any other cause, renders this impossible, the hostess 
should be immediately notified. 

A gentleman is never invited without his wife, nor 
a lady without her husband, unless great intimacy 
exists between the parties, and the sudden need of 
another guest makes the request imperative. 

The usual hour for dinner-parties in America is 
seven o'clock ; but whatever the hour, the guests 
should take care to be punctual to the minute. In 
the hall the gentleman should find a card with his 
name, and that of the lady whom he is to take in, 
written on it, and also a small boutonni&re, which he 
places in his button-hole. On entering the drawing- 
room the lady goes first, not taking her husband's 
arm. If the gentleman is not acquainted with the 
lady whom he is to take in to dinner, he asks his 
hostess to present him to her, and he endeavors to 
place himself on an agreeeble footing with her before 
they enter the dining-room. 



182 MANHEKS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

When the last guest has arrived, dinner is ready, 
and the butler makes his announcement. The host 
leads the way, with the lady to whom the dinner is 
given, and the hostess follows last, with the gentle- 
man whom she wishes to honor. 

The people who enter a modern dining-room find a 
picture before them, which is the result of painstaking 
thought, taste, and experience, and, like all works of 
art, worthy of study. 

The first thought of the observer is, "What a 
splendid bit of color I" The open-work, white table- 
cloth lies on a red ground, and above it rests a mat 
of red velvet, embroidered with peacock's feathers 
and gold lace. Above this stands a large silver 
salver or oblong tray, lined with reflecting glass, on 
which Dresden swan and silver lilies seem floating 
in a veritable lake. In the middle of this long tray 
stands a lofty vase of silver or crystal, with flowers 
and fruit cunningly disposed in it, and around it are 
placed tropical vines. At each of the four corners of 
the table stand four ruby glass flagons set in gold, 
standards of beautiful and rare designs. Cups or 
silver -gilt vases, with centres of cut glass, hold the 
bonbons and smaller fruits. Four candelabra hold 
up red wax-candles with red shades, and flat, glass 
troughs, filled with flowers, stand opposite each place, 
grouped in a floral pattern, 

At each place, as the servant draws back the chair, 
the guest sees a bewildering number of glass goblets, 
wine and champagne glasses, several forks, knives, 
and spoons, and a majolica plate holding oysters on 
the half shell, with a bit of lemon in the centre of 



SERVICE A LA RUSSE. 183 

the plate. The napkin, deftly folded, holds a dinner- 
roll, which the guest immediately removes. The ser- 
vants then, seeing all the guests seated, pass red and 
black pepper, in silver pepper-pots, on a silver tray. 
A small, peculiarly-shaped fork is laid by each plate, 
at the right hand, for the oysters. Although some 
ladies now have all their forks laid on the left hand 
of the plate, this, however, is not usual. After the 
oysters are eaten, the plates are removed, and two 
kinds of soup are passed — a white and a brown soup. 

During this part of the dinner the guest has time 
to look at the beautiful Queen Anne silver, the hand- 
some lamps, if lamps are used (we may mention the 
fact that about twenty-six candles will well light a 
dinner of sixteen persons), and the various colors of 
lamp and candle shades. Then the beauty of the 
flowers, and, as the dinner goes on, the variety of 
the modern Dresden china, the Sevres, the Royal 
Worcester, and the old blue can be discussed and 
admired. 

The service is d la Husse; that is, everything is 
handed by the servants. Nothing is seen on the table 
except the wines (and only a few of these), the bon- 
bons, and the fruit. Xo greasy dishes are allowed. 
Each lady has a bouquet, possibly a painted reticule 
of silk filled with sugar -plums, and sometimes a 
pretty fan or ribbon with her name or monogram 
painted on it. 

At his right hand each guest finds a goblet of ele- 
gantly-engraved glass for water, two of the broad, 
flat, flaring shape of the modern champagne gla 
(although some people are using the long vase- like 



184 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

glass of the past for champagne), a beautiful Bohe- 
mian green glass, apparently set with gems, for the 
hock, a ruby-red glass for the claret, two other large 
white claret or Burgundy glasses, and three wine- 
glasses of cut or engraved glass. Harlequin glasses, 
which give to the table the effect of a bed of tulips, 
are in fashion for those who delight in color and 
variety. 

The hostess may prefer the modern napery, so ex- 
quisitely embroidered in gold thread, which affords 
an opportunity to show the family coat of arms, or 
the heraldic animals — the lion and the two-headed 
eagle and the griffin — intertwined in graceful shapes 
around the whole edge of the table and on the nap- 
kins. 

As the dinner goes on the guest revels in unex- 
pected surprises in the beauty of the plates, some of 
which look as if made of solid gold ; and when the 
Roman punch is served it comes in the heart of a 
red, red rose, or in the bosom of a swan, or the cup 
of a lily, or the " right little, tight little " life-saving 
boat. Faience, china, glass, and ice are all pressed 
into the service of the Roman punch, and sometimes 
the prettiest dish of all is hewn out of ice. 

We will try to see how all this picture is made, 
beginning at the laying of the table, the process of 
which we will explain in detail in the next chapter. 



PREPARING THE TABLE FOR DINNER. 185 



CHAPTER XX. 

LAYING THE DINNER-TABLE. 

The table, after being drawn out to its proper 
length, should be covered with a cotton-flannel table- 
cloth—white, if the table-cover is the ordinary dam- 
ask; red, if the open work table-cover is to be used. 
This broad cotton flannel can be bought for eighty- 
cents a yard. The table-cloth, if of white damask, 
should be perfectly ironed, with one long fold down 
the middle, which must serve the butler for his 
mathematical centre. No one can be astray in using 
fine white damask. If a lady wishes to have the 
more rare Russian embroidery, the gold embroidered 
on the open-work table-cloth, she can do so, but let 
her not put any cloth on her table that will not wash. 
The mixed-up things trimmed with velvet or satin or 
ribbon, which are occasionally seen on vulgar tables, 
are detestable. 

The butler then lays the red velvet carpet, or mat, 
or ornamental cover — whatever it may be called — 
down the centre of the table, to afford a relief of 
color to the epergne. 

This is a mere fanciful adjunct, and may be used 
or not; but it has a very pretty effect over an open- 
work, white table-cloth, with the silver tray of tho 
epergne resting upon it. In many families there are 



186 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

silver epergnes which are heirlooms. These are now 
valued for old association's sake; as are the silver can- 
dlesticks and silver compotiers. But where a fam- 
ily does not possess these table ornaments, a centre 
piece of glass is used. The flat basket of flowers, 
over which the guests could talk, has been discarded, 
and the ornaments of a dinner -table are apt to be 
high, including the lamps and candelabra which at 
present replace gas. 

The table - cloth being laid, the centre and side 
ornaments placed, the butler sees that each footman 
has a clean towel on his arm, and then proceeds to 
unlock the plate chest and the glass closet. Measur- 
ing with his hand, from the edge of the table to the 
end of his middle finger, he places the first glass. 
This measurement is continued around the table, and 
secures a uniform line for the water goblet, and the 
claret, wine, hock, and champagne glasses, which are 
grouped about it. He then causes a plate to be put 
at each place, large enough to hold the majolica plate 
with the oysters, which will come later. One footman 
is detailed to fold the napkins, which should be large, 
thick, fine, and serviceable for this stage of the din- 
ner. The napkins are not folded in any hotel device, 
but simply in a three-cornered pyramid that will stand 
holding the roll or bread. The knives, forks, and 
spoons, each of which is wiped by the footman with 
his clean towel, so that no dampness of his own hand 
shall mar their sparkling cleanliness, are then distrib- 
uted. These should be all of silver; two knives, three- 
forks, and a soup-spoon being the usual number laid 
at each plate. 



DUTIES OF THE BUTLEK. 187 

Before each plate is placed a little salt-cellar, either 
of silver or china, in some fanciful shape. Tiny wheel- 
barrows are much used. A carafe holding water should 
be put on very late, and be fresh from the ice-chest. 

Very thin glasses are now used for choice sherry 
and Madeira, and are not put on until the latter part 
of the dinner, as they may be broken. 

Menu-holders or card-holders of china or silver are 
often placed before each plate, to hold the card on 
which the name of the guest is printed and the bill 
of fare from which he is to choose. These may be 
dispensed with, however, and the menu and name laid 
on each plate. 

The butler now turns his attention to his sideboards 
and tables, from whence he is to draw his supplies. 
Many people make a most ostentatious display of 
plate and china on their sideboards, and if one has 
pretty things why not show them ? The poorer and 
more modest have, on their sideboards, simply the 
things which will be needed. But there should be a 
row of large forks, a row of large knives, a row of 
small ones, a row of table - spoons, sauce-ladles, des- 
sert-spoons, fish-slice and fork, a few tumblers, rows 
of claret, sherry, and Madeira glasses, and the reserve 
of dinner-plates. 

On another table or sideboard should be placed the 
finger-bowls and glass dessert-plates, the smaller spoons 
and coffee cups and saucers. On the table nearest the 
door should be the carving-knives and the first dinner- 
plates to be used. Here the head footman or the but- 
ler divides the fish and carves the piice de resistai 
the fillet of beef, the haunch of venison, the turkey. 



188 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

or the saddle of mutton. It is from this side-table 
that all the dinner should be served; if the dining- 
room is small, the table can be placed in the hall or 
adjacent pantry. As the fish is being served, the first 
footman should offer Chablis, or some kind of white 
wine; with the soup, sherry; with the roast, claret and 
champagne, each guest being asked if he will have dry 
or sweet champagne. 

As the plates are removed they should not be kept 
in the dining-room, but sent to the kitchen immedi- 
ately, a maid standing outside to receive them, so that 
no disorder of the dinner may reach the senses of the 
guests, nor even an unpleasant odor. As each plate 
is removed a fresh plate must be put in its place — 
generally a very beautiful piece of S5vres, decorated 
with a landscape, flowers, or faces. 

Sparkling wines, hock and champagne, are not de- 
canted, but are kept in ice-pails, and opened as re- 
quired. On the sideboard is placed the wine decanted 
for use, and poured out as needed; after the game has 
been handed, decanters of choice Madeira and port 
are placed before the host, who sends them round to 
his guests. 

In England a very useful little piece of furniture, 
called a dinner-wagon, is in order. This is a series of 
open shelves, on which are placed the extra napkins 
or serviettes to be used; for in England the first heavy 
napkin is taken away, and a more delicate one brought 
with the Roman punch, with the game another, and 
with the ices still another. On this dinner-wagon are 
placed all the dessert - plates and the finger - glasses. 
On the plate which is to serve for the ice is a gold 



THE DINGER- WAGON. 189 

ice-spoon, and a silver dessert-knife and fork accom- 
pany the finger-bowl and glass plate. This dinner- 
wagon also holds the salad-bowl and spoon, of silver, 
the salad-plates, and the silver bread-basket, in which 
should be thin slices of brown bread-and-butter. A 
china dish in three compartments, with cheese and 
butter and biscuits to be passed with the salad, the 
extra sauces, the jellies for the meats, the relishes, the 
radishes and celery, the olives and the sifted sugar — 
ail things needed as accessaries of the dinner-table — 
can be put on this dinner-wagon, or etagere. as it is 
called in France. 

No table-spoons should be laid on the table, except 
those to be used for soup, as the style of serving d 
Basse precludes their being needed ; and the extra- 
spoons, cruets, and casters are put on the sideboard. 

To wait on a large dinner - party the attendants 
average one to every three people, and when only a 
butler and one footman are kept, it is necessary to 
hire additional servants. 

Previous to the announcement of the dinner, the 
footman places the soup-tureens and the soup-plates 
on the side-table. As soon as the oysters are eaten, 
and the plates removed, the butler begins with the 
soup, and sends it round by two footmen, one on each 
side, each carrying two plates. Each footman should 
approach the guests on the left, so that the right hand 
may be used for taking the plate. Half a ladleful of 
soup is quite enough to serve. 

Some ladies never allow their butler to do any- 
thing but hand the wine, which he does at the right 
bind (not the left), asking each person if he will have 



190 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Sauterne, dry or sweet champagne, claret, Burgundy, 
and so on. But really clever butlers serve the soup, 
carve, and pour out the wine as well. An inexperi- 
enced servant should never serve the wine; it must 
be done briskly and neatly, not explosively or care- 
lessly. The overfilling of the glass should be avoided, 
and servants should be watched, to see that they 
give champagne only to those who wish it, and that 
they do not overfill glasses for ladies, who rarely 
drink anything. 

A large plate-basket or two, for removing dishes 
and silver that have been used, are necessary, and 
should not be forgotten. The butler rings a bell 
which communicates with the kitchen when he re- 
quires anything, and after each entree or course he 
thus gives the signal to the cook to send up another. 

Hot dinner-plates are prepared when the fish is re- 
moved, and on these hot plates the butler serves all 
the meats ; the guests are also served with hot plates 
before the entrees, except pate de foie gras, for which 
a cold plate is necessary. 

Some discretion should be shown by the servant 
who passes the entrees. A large table - spoon and 
fork should be placed on the dish, and the dish then 
held low, so that the guest may help himself easily, 
the servant standing at his left hand. He should 
always have a small napkin over his hand as he 
passes a dish. A napkin should also be wrapped 
around the champagne bottle, as it is often drip- 
ping with moisture from the ice - chest. It is the 
butler's duty to make the salad, which he should do 
about half an hour before dinner. There are now so 



ORDER OF THE COURSES AT DINNER. 191 

many provocatives of appetite that it would seem as 
if we were all, after the manner of Heliogabalus, 
determined to eat and die. The best of these is the 
Roman punch, which, coming after the heavy roasts, 
prepares the palate and stomach for the canvas-back 
ducks or other game. Then comes the salad and 
cheese, then the ices and sweets, and then cheese 
savourie or cheese fondu. This is only toasted cheese, 
in a very elegant form, and is served in little silver 
shells, sometimes as early in the dinner as just after 
the oysters, but the favorite time is after the sweets. 

The dessert is followed by the liqueurs, which should 
be poured into very small glasses, and handed by the 
butler on a small silver waiter. When the ices are 
removed, a dessert-plate of glass, with a finger-bowl, 
is placed before each person, with two glasses, one 
for sherry, the other for claret or Burgundy, and the 
grapes, peaches, pears, and other fruits are then 
passed. After the fruits go round, the sugar-plums 
and a little dried ginger — a very pleasant conserve — 
are passed before the coffee. 

The hostess makes the sign for retiring, and the 
dinner breaks up. The gentlemen are left to wine 
and cigars, liqueurs and cognac, and the ladies retire 
to the drawing-room to chat and take their coffee. 

In the selection of the floral decoration for the ta- 
ble the lady of the house has the final voice. Flow- 
ers which have a very heavy fragrance should not be 
used. That roses and pinks, violets and lilacs, are 
suitable, goes without saying, for they are always 
delightful; but the heavy tropical odors of jasmine, 
orange-blossom, hyacinth, and tuberose should b 



192 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

avoided. A very pretty decoration is obtained by 
using flowers of one color, such as Jacqueminot roses, 
or scarlet carnations, which, if placed in the gleam- 
ing crystal glass, produce a very brilliant and beau- 
tiful effect. 

Flowers should not be put on the table until just 
before dinner is served, as they are apt to be wilted 
by the heat and the lights. 

We have used the English term footman to indi- 
cate what is usually called a waiter in this country. 
A waiter in England is a hired hotel-hand, not a pri- 
vate servant. 

Much taste and ingenuity are expended on the 
selection of favors for ladies, and these pretty fan- 
cies — bonbonni&res, painted ribbons and reticules, and 
fans covered with flowers — add greatly to the ele- 
gance and luxury of our modern dinner-table. 

A less reasonable conceit is that of having toys — 
such as imitation musical instruments, crackers which 
make an unpleasant detonation, imitations of negro 
minstrels, balloons, flags, and pasteboard lobsters, 
toads, and insects — presented to each lady. These 
articles are neither tasteful nor amusing, and have 
"no excuse for being" except that they afford an op- 
portunity for the expenditure of more money. 



BONBOXXIERES AND MENU-HOLDERS. 103 



CHAPTER XXL 

FAVORS AXD BONBONNIERES. 

Truly " the world is very young for its age." We 
are never too old to admire a pretty favor or a taste- 
ful bonbonni&re ; and, looking back over the season, 
we remember, as among the most charming of the 
favors, those with flowers painted upon silken ban- 
ners, with the owner's name intertwined. The tech- 
nical difficulties of painting upon silk are somewhat 
conquered, one would think, in looking at the endless 
devices composed of satin and painted flowers on the 
lunch-tables. Little boxes covered with silk, in eight 
and six sided forms, with panels let in, on which are 
painted acorns and oak leaves, rosebuds or lilies, and 
always the name or the cipher of the recipient, are very 
pretty. The Easter-egg has long been a favorite offer- 
ing in silk, satin, plush, and velvet, in covered, egg- 
shaped boxes containing bonbons; these, laid in a nest 
of gold and silver threads in a cloisonne basket, afford 
a very pretty souvenir to carry home from a luncheon. 

Menu-holders of delicate gilt-work are also added 
to the other favors. These pretty little things some- 
times uphold a photograph, or a porcelain plate on 
which is painted the lady's name, and also a few flow- 
ers. The little porcelain cards are not larger than a 
visiting-card, and are often very artistic. The famous 

13 



194 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

and familiar horseshoe, in silver or silver-gilt, hold- 
ing up the menu-card, is another pretty favor, and 
a very nice one to carry home, as it becomes a pen- 
holder when it is put on the writing-table. Wire 
rests, shaped like those used for muskets in barracks- 
yards, are also used for the name and menu -cards. 
Plateaus, shells, baskets, figurettes, vases holding 
flowers, dolphins, Tritons, swan, sea animals (in 
crockery), roses which open and disclose the sugar- 
plums, sprays of coral, and gilt conch-shells, are all 
pretty, especially when filled with flowers. 

Baskets in various styles are often seen. One tied 
with a broad ribbon at the side is very useful as a 
work-basket afterwards. Open-work baskets, lined 
with crimson or scarlet or pink or blue plush, with 
another lining of silver paper to protect the plums, 
are very tasteful. A very pretty basket is one hung 
between three gilt handles or poles, and filled with 
flowers or candies. Silvered and gilded beetles, or 
butterflies, fastened on the outside, have a fanciful 
effect. 

Moss-covered trays holding dried grasses and straw, 
and piles of chocolates that suggest ammunition, are 
decorative and effective. 

Wheelbarrows of tiny size for flowers are a favor- 
ite conceit. They are made of straw-work, entirely 
gilded, or painted black or brown, and picked out 
with gold; or perhaps pale green, with a bordering of 
brown. A very pretty one may be made of old cigar- 
box wood; on one side a monogram painted in red and 
gold, on the other a spray of autumn leaves. Carved- 
wood barrows fitted with tin inside may hold a grow- 



RETICULES AND CHATELAINES. 195 

ing plant — stephanotis, hyacinths, ferns, ivy, or any 
other hardy plant — and are very pleasing souvenirs. 

The designs for reticules and chatelaines are endless. 
At a very expensive luncheon, to which twenty-four 
ladies sat down, a silk reticule a foot square, filled with 
Maillard's confections and decorated with an exquisite- 
ly painted landscape effect, was presented to each guest. 
These lovely reticules may be any shape, and com- 
posed of almost any material. A very handsome style 
is an eight -sided, melon -shaped bag of black satin, 
with a decoration of bunches of scarlet flowers painted 
or embroidered. Silk braided with gold, brocade, and 
plush combined, and Turkish towelling with an a}> 
plique of brilliant color, are all suitable and effective. 

In the winter a shaded satin muff, in which was 
hidden a bonbonnilre, was the present that made glad 
the hearts of twenty-eight ladies. These are easily 
made in the house, and a plush muff with a bird's 
head is a favorite " favor." 

A pair of bellows is a pretty and inexpensive bon- 
bomiiere. They can be bought at the confectioner's, 
and are more satisfactory than when made at home; 
but if one is ingenious, it is possible, with a little 
pasteboard, gilt paper, silk, and glue, to turn out a 
very pretty little knickknack of this kind. However, 
the French do these things so much better than we 
do that a lady giving a lunch-party had better buy 
all her favors at some wholesale place. There is a 
real economy in buying such articles at the wholesale 
stores, for the retail dealers double the price. 

Bronze, iron, and glass are all pressed into the ser- 
vice, and occasionally we have at a lunch a wholo 



196 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

military armament of cannon, muskets, swords, bronze 
helmets, whole suits of armor, tazza for jewellery, min- 
iature cases, inkstands, and powder-boxes, all to hold 
a few sugar-plums. 

At a christening party all the favors savor of the 
nursery — splendid cradles of flowers, a bassinet of 
brilliante trimmed with ribbons for a bonbomittre, 
powder-boxes, puffs, little socks filled with sugar in- 
stead of little feet, an infant's cloak standing on end 
(really over pasteboard), an infant's hood, and even 
the flannel shirt has been copied. Of course the bap- 
tismal dish and silver cup are easily imitated. 

Perfumery is introduced in little cut-glass bottles, 
in leaden tubes like paint tubes, in perfumed arti- 
ficial flowers, in sachets of powder, and in the handles 
of fans. 

Boxes of satinwood, small wood covers for music 
and blotting cases, painted by hand, are rather pret- 
ty favors. The plain boxes and book covers can be 
bought and ornamented by the young artists of the 
family. Nothing is prettier than an oavI sitting on 
an ivy vine for one of these. The owl, indeed, plays 
a very conspicuous part at the modern dinner -table 
and luncheon. His power of looking wise and being 
foolish at the same time fits him for modern society. 
He enters it as a pepper-caster, a feathered bonbon- 
niere, a pickle-holder (in china), and is drawn, paint- 
ed, and photographed in every style. A pun is made 
on his name: " Should owled acquaintance be forgot ?" 
etc. He is a favorite in jewellery, and is often carved 
in jade. Indeed, the owl is having his day, having 
had the night always to himself. 



FAVORS OF EVERY DESCRIPTION. 197 

The squirrel, the dog, " the frog that would a-woo- 
ing go," the white duck, the pig, and the mouse, are 
all represented in china, and in the various silks and 
gauzes of French taste, or in their native skins, or in 
any of the disguises that people may fancy. Bears 
with ragged staffs stand guard over a plate of mod- 
ern faience, as they do over the gates of Warwick 
Castle. Cats mewing, catching mice, playing on the 
Jews -harp, elephants full of choicest confectionery, 
lions and tigers with chocolate insides, and even the 
marked face and long hair of Oscar Wilde, the last 
holding within its ample cranium caraway-seeds in- 
stead of brains, played their part as favors. 

The green enamelled dragon-fly, grasshoppers and 
beetles, flies and wasps, moths and butterflies, bright- 
tinted mandarin ducks, peacocks, and ostriches, tor- 
toises cut in pebbles or made of pasteboard, shrimps 
and crabs, do all coldly furnish forth the lunch-table 
as favors and bonbormifrres. Then come plaster or 
pasteboard gondolas, skiffs, wherries, steamships, and 
ferry-boats, all made w^ith wondrous skill and freight- 
ed with caramels. Imitation rackets, battledoor and 
shuttlecock, hoops and sticks, castanets, cup and ball, 
tambourines, guitars, violins, hand-organs, banjos, and 
drums, all have their little day as fashionable favors. 

Little statuettes of Kate Greenaway's quaint chil- 
dren now appear as favors, and are very charming. 
Nor is that " flexible curtain," the fan, left out. Those 
of paper, pretty but not expensive, are very common 
favors. But the opulent offer pretty satin fans paint- 
ed with the recipient's monogram, or else a fan which 
will match flowers and dress. Fans of lace, and of 



198 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

tortoise-shell and carved ivory and sandal- wood, are 
sometimes presented, but they are too ostentatious. 
Let us say to the givers of feasts, be not too magnifi- 
cent, but if you give a fan, give one that is good for 
something, not a thing which breaks with the " first 
fall." 

A very pretty set of favors, called "fairies," are 
little groups of children painted on muslin, with a 
background of ribbon. The muslin is so thin that 
the children seem floating on air. The lady's name 
is also painted on the ribbon. 

We find that favors for gentlemen, such as sunflow- 
ers, pin-cushions, small purses, scarf-pins, and sleeve- 
buttons, are more useful than those bestowed upon 
ladies, but not so ornamental. 

Very pretty baskets, called huits (the baskets used 
by the vine-growers to carry earth for the roots of 
the vines), are made of straw ornamented with arti- 
ficial flowers and grasses, and filled with bonbons. 

Little Leghorn hats trimmed with pompons of mus- 
lin, blue, pink, or white, are filled with natural flowers 
and hung on the arm. These are a lovely variation. 

Fruits — the apple, pear, orange, and plum, delight- 
fully realistic — are made of composition, and open to 
disclose most unexpected seeds. 

A trowel, a knife, fork, and spoon, of artistically 
painted wood, and a pair of oars, all claim a passing 
notice as artistic novelties. 

Bags of plush, and silk embroidered with daisies, 
are very handsome and expensive favors ; heavily 
trimmed with lace, they cost four dollars apiece, but 
are sold a little cheaper by the dozen. Blue sashes, 



THE COST OF A LUNCHEON. 199 

with flowers painted on paper (and attached to the 
sash a paper on which may be written the menu), cost 
eighteen dollars a dozen. A dish of snails, fearfully 
realistic, can be bought for one dollar a plate, fruits 
for eighteen dollars a dozen, and fans anywhere from 
twelve up to a hundred dollars a dozen. 

A thousand dollars is not an unusual price for a 
luncheon, including flowers and favors, for eighteen 
to twenty-four guests. Indeed, a luncheon was given 
last winter for which the hostess offered a prize for 
copies in miniature of the musical instruments used 
in " Patience." They were furnished to her for three 
hundred dollars. The names of these now almost 
obsolete instruments were rappaka, tibia, archlute, 
tambour, kiffar, quinteme, rehal, tuckin, arehviola, 
lyra, serpentine, chluy, viola da gamba, balalaika, 
gong, ravanastron, monochord, shopkar. The " arch- 
lute " is the mandolin. They represented all coun- 
tries, and were delicate specimens of toy handiwork. 

We have not entered into the vast field of glass, 
china, porcelain, cloisonne, Dresden, faience jugs, box- 
es, plates, bottles, and vases, which are all used as 
favors. Indeed, it would be impossible to describe 
half of the fancies which minister to modern ex- 
travagance. The honbonnihre can cost anything, 
from five to five hundred dollars ; fifty dollars for a 
satin box filled with candy is not an uncommon price. 
Sometimes, when the box is of oxidized silver — a quaint 
copy of the antique from Benvenuto Cellini — this price 
is not too much; but when it is a thing which tarnishes 
in a month, it seems ridiculously extravagant. 

We have seen very pretty and artistic cheap favors. 



200 MANNEKS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Reticules made of bright cotton, or silk handkerchiefs 
with borders ; cards painted by the artists of the fam- 
ily ; palm-leaf fans covered with real flowers, or painted 
with imitation ones; sunflowers made of pasteboard, 
with portfolios behind them; pretty little parasols of 
flowers ; Little Red Riding-hood, officiating as a re- 
ceptacle for stray pennies; Japanese teapots, with the 
" cozy " made at home ; little doyleys wrought with 
delightful designs from "Pretty Peggy," and num- 
berless other graceful and charming trifles. 



LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 201 



CHAPTER XXII. 

FLORAL TRIBUTES AND DECORATIONS. 

Whex every steamer leaving these shores goes 
out laden with people who are weighed down with 
flowers, it cannot but be a severe tax on the in- 
genuity of the florist to devise novel and appropri- 
ate forms for the typical basket that shall say bon 
voyage in a thousand new ways. Floral ships, an- 
chors, stars, crosses, mottoes, monograms, and even 
the national flag, have been used for these steamer 
decorations. 

But the language of flowers, so thoroughly under- 
stood among the Persians that a single flower ex- 
presses a complete declaration of love, an offer of 
marriage, and, presumably, a hint at the settlement, 
is, with our more practical visionaries and enthusiasts 
of the nineteenth century, rather an echo of the stock 
market than a poetical fancy. We fear that no prima 
donna looks at her flowers without a thought of how 
much they have cost, and that the belle estimates her 
bouquet according to the commercial value of a lily- 
of-the-valley as compared with that of a Jacqueminot 
rose, rather than as flowers simply. It is a pity that 
the overwhelming luxury of an extravagant period 
involves in its all-powerful grasp even the flowers of 
the field, those generous gifts of sunshine and of rain. 



202 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

But so it is. It is a well-known fact that the lady 
who will give her order three months in advance for 
the flowers needed for her daughter's wedding, or for 
any other grand ceremonial, can, by offering a suffi- 
ciently large amount of money, command any flower 
she wishes. Even daisies and buttercups, red clover 
and white, the delicate forget-me-not of the garden, 
nasturtiums and marigolds, the shy and tender ane- 
mone, the dandelion and lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley, 
may be forced into unnatural bloom in January. It 
is a favorite caprice to put the field-flowers of June 
on a lunch-table in January. 

This particular table is the greatest of all the con- 
sumers of flowers, therefore we may begin by de- 
scribing some of the new fancies developed by that 
extraordinarily luxurious meal. A lady's lunch must 
show not only baskets of magnificent flowers up and 
down the table, but it must also bear a basket or a 
bouquet for each lady. 

One of the most regal lunches, given to twenty- 
eight ladies, set the fashion for using little gilt bas- 
kets, with covers opening on either side of the han- 
dle — the kind of basket, of a larger size, in which, 
in New England and in Old England, Dame Trot 
carried her multifarious parcels home from market. 
These pretty and useful baskets had on each side a 
bunch of flowers peeping out through the open cover, 
and on the gilt handle was tied a ribbon correspond- 
ing in color to the flowers. One of them, having soft 
pink rosebuds of exceeding size and loveliness on one 
side and a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley on the other, 
with a bow of pink satin ribbon on the handle, was 



"dame trot" baskets. 203 

as pretty a picture as ever Kate Greenaway devised. 
Another, showing the strong contrast of purple pan- 
sies and yellow daffodils, and tied with a lovely purple 
satin ribbon, was a dream of rich color. 

The stiff, formal, flat bouquets of yellow daffodils 
and bunches of violets, tied w^ith purple ribbon, make 
a very fine effect laid in regular order at each plate. 
Repetition of a favorite idea in flowers is not ugly, 
although it seems at first very far from the primeval 
and delicious confusion in which nature throws her 
bouquets down upon upland and meadow. 

In the arrangement of roses the most varied and 
whimsical fancies may be displayed, although the 
most gorgeous effect is produced, perhaps, by massing 
a single color or group. A basket of the pink Gloire 
de Paris, however, with its redundant green foliage, 
alternated with deep - red Jacqueminots, is a very 
splendid fancy, and will fill a room with fragrance. 
In February these roses cost two dollars apiece, and 
it was no rare sight to see four or six baskets, each 
containing forty roses, on one table during the winter 
of 1884. 

We advise all ladies going into the country to pur- 
chase some of the little " Dame Trot " baskets, as they 
will be lovely when filled with wild-flowers during the 
summer. Indeed, the gilt basket, fitted with a tin pan 
to hold earth or water, is such a cheap and pretty 
receptacle for either growing or cut flowers that it 
ought to be a belonging of every dinner-table. 

From the lunch -table, with its baskets and floral 
fancies, we come to the dinner-table. Here the space 
is so valuable that the floral bag 3 an ingenious plan 



204 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

by which roses may be hung at the side of the wearer, 
has been invented. This is a novel and very pretty 
way of wearing flowers. The roses or other flowers 
are tied together with wires, in the shape of a reticule, 
and a ribbon and pin provided, so that the lady may 
fasten her floral trophy at her side. The baskets of 
flowers and the adornments of the epergne for a din- 
ner are very apt to be all of one flower. If mixed, 
they are of two sorts, as yellow roses and red ones, 
or white and pink, or, may be, half of lilacs and half 
of roses, or purple pansies and bright yellow flowers. 
Some tables are set with scarlet carnations alone, and 
the effect is very fine. 

For wedding decorations, houses are now filled with 
palm-trees in pots and orange-trees in full bearing. 
An entire suite of rooms is made into a bower of 
large-leaved plants. Mirrors are covered with vines, 
wreaths, and climbing roses, trained across a trellis 
of wire. The bride stands under a floral umbrella, 
which juts out into the room. The monograms 
of bride and bridegroom are put in floral shields 
against the wall, like the cartouche on which the 
names and the titles of an Egyptian king are em- 
blazoned in the solitude of the Pyramids. The bou- 
quets carried by brides and bridesmaids are now ex- 
traordinarily large, measuring a foot or more across 
the top. 

Tulips have always been favorite ornaments for the 
dinner-table. These flowers, so fine in drawing and 
so splendid in color, produce an extremely brilliant 
effect in large masses. As Easter approaches, lilies 
come in for especial notice, and the deep Japan cup- 



FLORAL REPRESENTATIONS. 

lily, grouped with the stately oailas, and the garden- 
lily, with its long yellow stamens and rich perfume, 
worthily fill the epergnes. 

Hyacinths are lovely harbingers of spring, and are 
beautiful in color ; but there is a strong objection to 
this flower as a decoration, its heavy perfume being 
unpleasant to some people. 

A fish-basket filled with bunches of lilies, mignon- 
ette, deep pink moss-roses shaded to the pale tints of 
the rose known as the Baroness de Rothschild, with 
a glowing centre of warm red Jacqueminots and a 
fringe of purple pansies and Mareehal Niels, was one 
many beautiful floral ornaments on a magnificent 
dinner-table. 

In spite of the attempt to prevent the e?ctravagant 
use of flowers at funerals, we still see on those sad oc- 
casions some new and rather poetic ideas expressed 
by floral emblems. One of these, called the ** Gates 
Ajar." was very beautiful : the "gates n panelled with 
lilies, and surmounted by doves holding sprays of pas- 
sion-vines in their beaks. 

Palms < and clasped by : 1 ribbone 

— of roses lying on a bed of ivy, a basket 
made of ivy and autumn leaves, holding a sheaf of 
grain and a sickle of violets, an ivy pillow with a 
fl were on one side, a bunch of pansies held 
by a knot of ribbon at one corner, a cross made of 
ivy alone, a "harvest-field** made of ears of wh 
the many new funereal designs whi 
the monotony of th Iful white eros- 5, 

crowns, and anchors, hearts and wr 

It is no longer n color from tl 



206 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

tributes to the dead. Indeed, some of the most beau- 
tiful designs noticed at recent funerals have been 
composed of colored flowers. 

For a christening, a floral cradle or swinging ham- 
mock, a bowl, a silver cup full of the tiniest flowers, 
are all favorite designs. A large table of flowers, 
with the baby's initials in the centre, was sent to one 
happy young mother on a recent auspicious occasion; 
and far more lovely was a manger of flowers, with the 
"Star of the East" hanging above it, alLmade of that 
pretty white flower the Star of Bethlehem. 

Strange contrasts of flowers have been made : pur- 
ple lilacs and the blue forget-me-nots were a favorite 
combination — " stylish, not pretty," was the whispered 
criticism. 

The yellow marigold, a sort of small sunflower, has 
been the favorite "caprice" for bouquets de corsage. 
This is as near to an actual sunflower as the aesthetes 
have ventured to approach. With us, perhaps, there 
is no more splendid yellow than this marigold, and it 
admirably sets off a black or sage green dress. 

An extravagant lady, at a ball, wore around her 
white dress skirt a fringe of real violets. Although 
less effective than the artificial ones, they had a pret- 
ty appearance until they drooped and faded. This 
adornment cost one hundred and fifty dollars. 

A rainbow has been attempted in flowers, but with 
poor success. It will look like a ribbon — a very hand- 
some ribbon, no doubt; but the arc-en-ciel evades re- 
production, even in the transcendent prismatic colors 
of flowers. 

Ribbons have been used with flowers, and add much 



COST OF FLORAL DECORATIONS. 207 

to their effect ; for, since the Arcadian clays of Rosa- 
lind and Celia, a flower, a ribbon, and a pretty girl, 
have been associated with each other in prose, poetry, 
painting, and romance. 

The hanging-baskets, filled with blooming plants, 
trailers, and ferns, have been much used at weddings 
to add to the bower-like appearance of the rooms ; 
and altars and steps of churches have been richly 
adorned with flowering plants and palm-trees and 
other luxuriant foliage. 

The prices paid for flowers have been enormous. 
One thousand dollars for the floral decorations for a 
single dinner has not been an uncommon price. But 
the expenditure of such large sums for flowers has not 
been unprofitable. The flowers grow finer every day, 
and, as an enterprising florist, who had given a "rose 
tea" to his patrons, remarked, "Every large order 
inspires us to produce a finer flower." 



208 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

GARDEN-PARTIES. 

Many of our correspondents ask us, "What shall 
we order for a garden-party ?" We must answer that 
the first thing to order is a fine day. In these fortu- 
nate days the morning revelations of Old Probabili- 
ties give us an almost exact knowledge of what of 
rain or sunshine the future has in store. 

A rain or tornado which starts from Alaska, where 
the weather is made nowadays, will almost certainly 
be here on the third day ; so the hostess who is will- 
ing to send a hasty bidding can perhaps avoid rain. 
It is the custom, however, to send invitations for these 
garden-parties a fortnight before they are to occur. 
At Newport they are arranged weeks beforehand, 
and if the weather is bad the entertainment takes 
place in-doors. 

When invitations are given to a suburban place to 
w r hich people are expected to go by rail or any public 
means of conveyance, a card should also be sent stat- 
ing the hours at which trains leave, which train or 
boat to take, and any other information that may add 
to the comfort of the guest. These invitations are 
engraved, and printed on note-paper, which should be 
perfectly plain, or bear the family crest in water-mark 
only, and read somewhat as follows : 



THE GARDEN-PARTY PROPER. 209 

Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Smith 
request the pleasure of 

Mr. and Mrs. Conic ay Brown's 
company on Tuesday, the thirtieth of July, 
at four o'clock. 
Garden Party. Yonkers, New York. 

Then, on the card enclosed, might be printed, 

Carriages icill meet the 3.30 train from Grand Central Depot. 

If the invitation is to a country place not easy of 
access, still more explicit directions should be given. 

The garden-party proper is always held entirely in 
the open air. In England the refreshments are served 
under a marquee in the grounds, and in that inclem- 
ent clime no one seems to think it a hardship if a 
shower of rain comes down, and ruins fine silks and 
beautiful bonnets. But in our fine sunshiny land we 
are very much afraid of rain, and our malarious soil 
is not considered always safe, so that the thoughtful 
hostess often has her table in-doors, piazzas filled with 
chairs, Turkey rugs laid down on the grass, and every 
preparation made that the elderly and timid and rheu- 
matic may enjoy the garden-party without endanger- 
ing their health. 

A hostess should see that her lawn-tennis ground is 
in order, the croquet laid out, and the archery tools 
all in place, so that her guests may amuse themselves 
with these different games. Sometimes balls and races 
are added to these amusements, and often a platform 
is laid for dancing, if the turf be not sufficiently dry. 
A band of musicians is essential to a very elegant 
and successful garden-party, and a varied selection of 
music, grave and gay, should be rendered. Although 

14 



210 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

at a dinner-party there is reason to fear that an or- 
chestra may he a nuisance, at a garden-party the 
open air and space are sufficient guarantees against 
this danger. 

If the hostess wishes her entertainment to be served 
out-of-doors, of course all the dishes must be cold. 
Salads, cold birds, and ham, tongue, and pate de foie 
graSj cold pates, and salmon dressed with a green sauce, 
jellies, Charlottes, ices, cakes, punch, and champagne, 
are the proper things to offer, A cup of hot tea 
should be always ready in the house for those who 
desire it. 

At a garden-party proper the hostess receives out on 
the lawn, wearing her hat or bonnet, and takes it for 
granted that the party will be entirely out-of-doors. 
The carriages, however, drive up to the door, and the 
ladies can go up- stairs and deposit their wraps and 
brush off the dust, if they wish. A servant should be 
in attendance to show the guests to that part of the 
grounds in which the lady is receiving. 

At Newport these parties are generally conducted 
on the principle of an afternoon tea, and after the 
mistress of the house has received her guests, they 
wander through the grounds, and, w r hen weary, return 
to the house for refreshment. Pate de foie gras, sand- 
wiches, cold birds, plates of delicious jellied tongue, 
lobster salad, and sometimes hot cakes and hot broiled 
chicken, are served at these high teas. Coffee and tea 
and wine are also offered, but these are at mixed en- 
tertainments which have grown out of the somewhat 
unusual hours observed at Newport in the season. 

There is a sort of public garden-party in this coun- 



PUBLIC GARDKN-PABTIES. 211 

try which prevails on semi- official occasions, such 
the laying of a foundation-stone for a public building, 
the birthday of a prominent individual, a Sunday- 
school festival, or an entertainment given to a public- 
functionary. These are banquets, and for them the 
invitations are somewhat general, and should be of- 
ficially issued. For the private garden-party it is 
per for a lady to ask for an invitation for a friend, 
as there is always plenty of room: but it should also 
be observed that where this request is not answered 
affirmatively, offence should not be taken. It is some- 
times very difficult for a lady to understand why her 
request for an invitation to her friend is refused: but 
she should never take the refusal as a discourtesy to 
herself. There may be reasons which cannot be ex- 
plained. 

Ladies always wear bonnets at a garden-party, and 
the sensible fashion of short di is hitherto pre- 

vailed ; but it is rumored that a recent edict of the 
Princess of VTales against short dresses at her gar- 
den-parties will find followers on this side of the 
water, notably at Newport, which out-Herods Herod 
in its respect to English fashk: 

Indeed, a long dress is very pretty on the grass and 
under the trees. At Buckingham Palace a garden- 
party given to the Viceroy of Egypt several ye 
ago presented a very Watteau-like picture. Worth's 
handsomest dresses were freely displayed, and the 
lovely grounds and old trees at the back oi the pal- 
re in fine full dress for th 

Ed fact, England is the land for garden - 
with its turf of velvet soft: 



212 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

its splendid old oaks, and its finished landscape gar- 
dening. There are but few places as yet in America 
which afford the clipped-box avenues, the arcades of 
blossoming rose-vines, the pleached alleys, the finely 
kept and perfect gravel- walks, or, better than all, the 
quiet, old-fashioned gardens, down which tho ladies 
may walk, rivals of the flowers. 

But there are some such places; and a green lawn, 
a few trees, a good prospect, a fine day, and some- 
thing to eat, are really all the absolute requirements 
for a garden-party. In the neighborhood of New 
York very charming garden-parties have been given : 
at the Brooklyn Navy-yard and the camp of the sol- 
dier, at the head-quarters of the officers of marines, 
and at the ever-lovely Governor's Island. 

Up the Hudson, out at Orange (with its multitudi- 
nous pretty settlements), all along the coast of Long 
Island, the garden-party is almost imperatively nec- 
essary. The owner of a fine place is expected to al- 
low the unfortunates who must stay in town at least 
one sniff of his roses and new-mown hay. 

Lawn-tennis has had a great share in making the 
garden-party popular ; and in remote country places 
ladies should learn how to give these parties, and, with 
very little trouble, make the most of our fine climate. 
There is no doubt that a little awkwardness is to be 
overcome in the beginning, for no one knows exactly 
what to do. Deprived of the friendly shelter of a 
house, guests wander forlornly about ; but a graceful 
and ready hostess will soon suggest that a croquet 
or lawn-tennis party be formed, or that a contest at 
archery be entered upon, or that even a card-party 



EFFICIENT SERVANTS NECESSxlRY. 213 

is in order, or that a game of checkers can be played 
under the trees. 

Servants should be taught to preserve the proprie- 
ties of the feast, if the meal be served under the trees. 
There should be no piles of dishes, knives, forks, or 
spoons, visible on the green grass ; baskets should be 
in readiness to carry off everything as soon as used. 
There should be a sufficient quantity of glass and 
china in use, and plenty of napkins, so that there need 
be no delay. The lemonade and punch bowls should 
be replenished from the dining-room as soon as they 
show signs of depletion, and a set of neat maid-ser- 
vants can be advantageously employed in watching 
the table, and seeing that the cups, spoons, plates, 
wine-glasses, and forks are in sufficient quantity and 
clean. If tea is served, maid-servants are better than 
men, as they are careful that the tea is hot, and the 
spoons, cream, and sugar forthcoming. Fruit is an 
agreeable addition to a garden-party entertainment, 
and pines, melons, peaches, grapes, strawberries, are 
all served in their season. Pains should be taken to 
have these fruits of the very best that can be obtained. 

Claret-cup, champagne-cup, and soda-water, brandy 
and shandy-gaff, are provided on a separate table for 
the gentlemen ; Apollinaris water, and the various 
aerated waters so fashionable now, are also provided. 
Although gentlemen help themselves, it is necessary 
to have a servant in attendance to remove the wine- 
glasses, tumblers, and goblets as they are used, and (.> 
replenish the decanters and pitchers as they are emp- 
tied, and to supply fresh glasses. Many hospitable 
hosts offer their guests old Madeira, sherry, and port. 



214 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

The decanters are placed on the regular luncheon- 
table, and glasses of wine are carried by servants, 
on silver trays, to the ladies who are sitting on the 
piazzas and under the trees. Small thin tumblers are 
used for the claret and champagne cup, which should 
be held in silver or glass pitchers. 

If strawberries and cream are served, a small napkin 
should be put between the saucer and plate, and a 
dessert spoon and fork handed with each plate. 

The servants who carry about refreshments from 
the tent or the table where they are served should be 
warned to be very careful in this part of the service, 
as many a fine gown has been spoiled, by a dish of 
strawberries and cream or a glass of punch or lemon- 
ade being overturned, through a servant's want of care. 

Ices are now served at garden-parties in small pa- 
per cups placed on ice-plates — a fashion which is very 
neat, and which saves much of the mussiness which 
has heretofore been a feature of these entertain- 
ments. Numbers of small tables should be brought 
with the camp-stools, and placed at convenient in- 
tervals, where the guests can deposit their plates. 

A lady should not use her handsome glass or china 
at these al fresco entertainments. It is sure to be 
broken. It is better to hire all the necessary glass, 
silver, and china from the caterer, as it saves a world 
of counting and trouble. 

No doubt the garden-party is a troublesome affair, 
particularly if the refreshments are out-of-doors, but 
it is very beautiful and very amusing, and worth all 
the trouble. It is just as pleasant, however, if the 
table is in-doors. 



REVIVAL OF SUPPER-PARTIES. 215 



CHAPTER XXIY. 

SUPPER-PARTIES. 

After a long retirement into the shades, the sup- 
per-party, the " sit-down supper," once so dear to our 
ancestors, has been again revived. Leaders of soci- 
ety at Newport have found that, after the hearty 
lunch which everybody eats there at one or three 
o'clock the twelve or fourteen course dinner at seven 
o'clock, is too much; that people come home reluc- 
tantly from their ocean drive to dress ; and last sum- 
mer, in consequence, invitations were issued for sup- 
pers at nine or half -past nine. The suppers at pri- 
vate houses, which had previously fallen out of fash- 
ion by reason of the convenience and popularity 
of the great restaurants, were resumed. The very 
late dinners in large cities have, no doubt, also pre- 
vented the supper from being a favorite entertain- 
ment; but there is no reason (except the disap- 
proval of doctors) why suppers should not be in 
fashion in the country, or where people dine early. 
In England, where digestions are better than here, 
and where people eat more heavily, " the supper-tray " 
is an institution, and suppers are generally spread in 
every English country house; and we may acknowl- 
edge the fact that the supper — the little supper so 
dear to the hearts of our friends of the last century — ■ 



216 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

seems to be coming again into fashion here. Nothing 
can be more significant than that Harper's Bazar re- 
ceives many letters asking for directions for setting 
the table for supper, and for the proper service of 
the meats which are to gayly cover the cloth and 
enrich this always pleasant repast. 

In a general way the same service is proper at a 
supper as at a dinner, with the single exception of the 
soup-plates. Oysters on the half-shell and bouillon 
served in cups are the first two courses. If a hot sup- 
per is served, the usual dishes are sweetbreads, with 
green pease, cotelettes d la financibre, and some sort 
of game in season, such as reed-birds in autumn, can- 
vas-back ducks, venison, or woodcock; salads of every 
kind are in order, and are often served with the game. 
Then ices and fruit follow. Cheese is rarely offered, 
although some gomvnets insist that a little is neces- 
sary with the salad. 

After each course all the dishes and knives and 
forks that have been in use are replaced by fresh 
ones, and the order and neatness of the table pre- 
served to the end of the supper. We would think it 
unnecessary to mention this most obvious detail of 
table decorum, had not several correspondents asked 
to be informed concerning it. 

There is, of course, the informal supper, at which 
the dishes are all placed on a table together, as for a 
supper at a large ball. Meats, dressed salmon, chicken 
croquettes, salads, jellies, and ices are a part of the 
alarming melange of which a guest is expected to 
partake, with only such discrimination as may bo 
dictated by prudence or inclination. But this is not 



LATE SUPPERS. 217 

the "sit down," elegant supper so worthy to be re- 
vived, with its courses and its etiquette and its brill- 
iant conversation, which was the delight of our grand- 
mothers. 

A large centre-piece of flowers, with fruit and can- 
dies in glass compotiers, and high forms of nougat, 
and other sugar devices, are suitable standards for 
an elegant supper-table. Three sorts of wine may be 
placed on the table in handsome decanters — sherry, or 
Madeira, and Burgundy. The guests find oysters on 
the half -shell, with little fish forks, all ready for them. 
The napkin and bread are laid at the side or in front 
of each plate. These plates being removed, other 
plain plates are put in their place, and cups of bouillon 
are served, with gold teaspoons. This course passed, 
other plates are put before the guest, and some chick- 
en croquettes or lobster farci is passed. Sherry or 
Madeira should already have been served with the 
oysters. With the third course iced champagne is 
offered. Then follow game, or fried oysters, salads, 
and a slice of pate de foie gras, with perhaps tomato 
salad; and subsequently ices, jellies, fruit, and coffee, 
and for the gentlemen a glass of brandy or cordial. 
Each course is taken away before the next is pre- 
sented. Birds and salad are served together. 

There is a much simpler supper possible, which is 
often offered by a hospitable hostess after the opera 
or theatre. It consists of a few oysters, a pair of cold 
roast chickens, a dish of lobster or plain salad, with 
perhaps a glass of champagne, and one sort of ice- 
cream, and involves very little trouble or expense, ami 
can be safely said to give as much pleasure as the more 



218 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

sumptuous feast. This informal refreshment is often 
placed on a red table-cloth, with a dish of oranges and 
apples in the centre of the table, and one servant is 
sufficient. There should be, however, the same eti- 
quette as to the changing of plates, knives, and forks, 
etc., as in the more elaborate meal. 

The good house-keeper who gives a supper every 
evening to her hungry family may learn many an 
appetizing device by reading English books of cook- 
ery on this subject. A hashed dish of the meat left 
from dinner, garnished w-ith parsley, a potato salad, 
a few slices of cold corned beef or ham, some pickled 
tongues, bread, butter, and cheese, with ale or cider, 
is the supper offered at nearly every English house in 
the country. 

The silver and glass, the china and the fruit, should 
be as carefully attended to as for a dinner, and every- 
thing as neat and as elegant as possible, even at an 
informal supper. 

Oysters, that universal food of the American, are in- 
valuable for a supper. Fried oysters diffuse a dis- 
agreeable odor through the house, therefore they are 
not as convenient in a private dwelling as scalloped 
oysters, which can be prepared in the afternoon, and 
w T hich send forth no odor when cooking. Broiled 
oysters are very delicate, and are a favorite dish at an 
informal supper. Broiled birds and broiled bones are 
great delicacies, but they must be prepared by a very 
good cook. Chicken in various forms — hashed, fried, 
cold, or in salad — is useful ; veal may be utilized for 
all these things, if chicken is not forthcoming. The 
delicately treated chicken livers also make a very 



LATE SUPPERS. 219 

good dish, and mushrooms on toast are perfect in 
their season. Hot vegetables are never served, ex- 
cept green pease with some other dish. 

Beef, except in the form of a fillet, is never seen 
at a "sit-down" supper, and even a fillet is rather too 
heavy. Lobster in every form is a favorite supper 
delicacy, and the grouse, snipe, woodcock, teal, canvas- 
back, and squab on toast, are always in order. 

In these days of Italian warehouses and imported 
delicacies, the pressed and jellied meats, paths, sau- 
sages, and spiced tongues furnish a variety for a cold 
supper. No supper is perfect without a salad. 

The Romans made much of this meal, and among 
their delicacies were the ass, the dog, and the snail, 
sea-hedgehogs, oysters, asparagus, venison, wild boar, 
sea-nettles, fish, fowl, game, and cakes. The Germans 
to-day eat wild boar, head-cheese, pickles, goose's flesh 
dried, sausages, cheese, and salads for supper, and 
wash down with beer. The French, under Louis XIV., 
began to make the supper their most finished meal. 
They used gold and silver dishes, crystal cups and 
goblets, exquisite grapes crowned the epergne, and 
choicest fruits were served in golden dishes. The 
cooks sent up piquant sauces for the delicately cooked 
meats, the wines were drunk hot and spiced. The 
latter are taken iced now. Many old house-keepers, 
however, serve a rich, hot -mulled port for a winter 
supper. It is a delicious and not unhealthy beverage, 
and can be easily prepared. 

The doctors, as we have said, condemn a late sup- 
per, but the pros and cons of this subject admit of 
discussion. Every one, indeed, must decide for him- 



220 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

self. Few people can undergo excitement of an even- 
ing — an opera or play or concert, or even the pleasant 
conversation of an evening party — without feeling 
hungry. With many, if such an appetite is not ap- 
peased it will cause sleeplessness. To eat lightly and 
to drink lightly at supper is a natural instinct with 
people if they expect to go to bed at once ; but ex- 
citement is a great aid to digestion, and a heavy sup- 
per sometimes gives no inconvenience. 

Keats seems to have had a vision of a modern sup- 
per-table when he wrote : 

" soft he set 
A table, and . . . threw thereon 
A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet; 

. . . from forth the closet brought a heap 
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd, 
With jellies soother than the creamy curd, 
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon, 
Manna and dates: . . . spiced dainties every one." 

The supper being a meal purely of luxury should 
bo very dainty. Everything should be tasteful and 
appetizing ; the wines should be excellent, the claret 
not too cool, the champagne frapph, or almost so, the 
Madeira and the port the temperature of the room, 
and the sherry cool. If punch is served, it should be 
at the end of the supper. 

Many indulgent hostesses now allow young gentle- 
men to smoke a cigarette at the supper-table, after 
the eating and drinking is at an end, rather than 
break up the delicious flow of conversation which at 
the close of a supper seems to be at its best. This, 
however, should not be done unless every lady at the 



GEXEEAL SUPPERS. 221 

table acquiesces, as the smell of tobacco-smoke some- 
times gives women an unpleasant sensation. 

Suppers at balls and parties include now all sorts 
of cold and hot dishes, even a haunch of venison, and 
a fillet of beef, vrith truffles ; a cold salmon dressed 
vrith a green sauce ; oysters in every form except 
raw — they are not served at balls ; salads of every 
description ; boned and truffled turkey and chicken ; 
pates of game ; cold partridges and grouse ; path de 
fine graSy our American specialty, hot canvas-back 
duck ; and the Baltimore turtle, terrapin, oyster and 
game patties ; bonbons, ices, biscuits, creams, jellies, 
and fruits, with champagne, and sometimes, of later 
years, claret and Moselle cup, and champagne-cup — 
beverages which were not until lately known in Amer- 
ica, except at gentlemen's clubs and on board yachts, 
but which are very agreeable mixtures, and gaining 
in favor. Every lady should know how to mix cup, 
as it is convenient both for supper and lawn-tennis 
parties, and is preferable in its effects to the heavier 
article so common at parties — punch. 



222 MANNEKS A:N T D SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

SUMMER DINNEES, 

There is a season when the lingerers in town accept 
with pleasure an invitation to the neighboring country 
house, where the lucky suburban cit likes to entertain 
his friends. It is to be doubted, however, whether 
hospitality is an unmixed pleasure to those who ex- 
tend it. With each blessing of prosperity comes an 
attendant evil, and a lady who has a country house 
has always to face the fact that her servants are apt 
to decamp in a body on Saturday night, and leave her 
to take care of her guests as best she may. The nearer 
to town the greater the necessity for running a ser- 
vant's omnibus, which shall take the departing offend- 
er to the train, and speed the arrival of her successor. 

No lady should attempt to entertain in the country 
w^ho has not a good cook and a very competent waiter 
or waitress. The latter, if well trained, is in every 
respect as good as a man, and in some respects more 
desirable; women - servants are usually quiet, neater 
than men-servants, as a rule, and require less waiting 
upon. Both men and women should be required to 
wear shoes that do not creak, and to be immaculately 
neat in their attire. Maid - servants should always 
wear caps and white aprons, and men dress -coats, 
white cravats, and perfectly fresh linen. 



COUNTRY DINNERS. 223 

As the dinners of the opulent, who have butler, 
waiters, French cook, etc., are quite able to take care 
of themselves, we prefer to answer the inquiries of 
those of our correspondents who live in a simple 
manner, with two or three servants, and who wish to 
entertain with hospitality and without great expense. 

The dining-room of many country houses is small, 
and not cheerfully furnished. The houses built re- 
cently are improved in this respect, however, and now 
we will imagine a large room that has a pretty outlook 
on the Hudson, carpeted with fragrant matting, or 
with a hard- wood floor, on which lie India rugs. The 
table should be oval, as that shape brings guests near 
to each other. The table-cloth should be of white 
damask, and as fresh as sweet clover, for dinner : col- 
ored cloths are permissible only for breakfast and tea. 
The chairs should be easy, with high, slanting backs. 
For summer, cane chairs are much the most comfort- 
able, although those covered with leather are very 
nice. Some people prefer arm-chairs at dinner, but 
the arms are inconvenient to many, and, besides, take 
a great deal of room. The armless dinner- chairs are 
the best. 

Now, as a dinner in the country generally occurs 
after the gentlemen come from town, the matter of 
light has to be considered. If our late brilliant sunsets 
do not supply enough, how shall we light our summer 
dinners ? Few country houses have gas. Even if they 
have, it would be very hot, and attract mosquitoes. 

Candles are very pretty, but exceedingly trouble- 
some. The wind blows the flame to and fro ; the 
insects flutter into the light; an unhappy moth Beats 



224 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

himself on the wick, and burning into an unsightly 
cadaver makes a gutter down one side ; the little 
red -paper shades take fire, and there is a general 
conflagration. Yet light is positively necessary to 
digestion, and no party can be cheerful without it. 
Therefore, try carcel or moderator lamps with pretty 
transparent shades, or a hanging lamp with ground- 
glass shade. These lamps, filled with kerosene — and 
it must be done neatly, so that it will not smell — are 
the best lamps for the country dinner. If possible, 
however, have a country dinner by the light of day ; 
it is much more cheerful. 

Now for the ornamentation of the dinner. Let it 
be of flowers — wild ones, if possible, grasses, clovers, 
buttercups, and a few fragrant roses or garden flow- 
ers. There is no end to the cheap decorative china 
articles that are sold now for the use of flowers. A 
contemporary mentions orchids placed in baskets on 
the shoulders of Arcadian peasants ; lilies-of-the-val- 
ley, w T ith leaves as pale as their flowers, wheeled in 
barrows by Cupids or set in china slippers; crocuses 
grown in a china pot shaped like a thumbed copy of 
Victor Hugo's " Notre Dame de Paris;" or white tulips 
in a cluster of three gilt sabots, large enough to form 
a capital flower-stand, mounted on gilt, rustic branch- 
es. Stout pitchers, glass bowls, china bowls, and even 
old teapots, make pretty bouquet-holders. The Greek 
vase, the classic - shaped, old-fashioned champagne 
glass, are, however, unrivalled for the light grasses, 
field daisies, and fresh garden flowers. 

Pretty, modern English china, the cheap a old blue," 
the white and gold, or the French, with a colored bor- 



THE COUNTRY DINNER. 225 

der, are all good enough, for a country dinner; for if 
people have two houses, they do not like to take their 
fragile, expensive china to the country. Prettily- 
shaped tureens and vegetable dishes add very much 
to the comfort and happiness of the diners, and fort- 
unately they are cheap and easily obtained. Glass 
should always be thin and fine, and tea and coffee 
cups delicate to the lip : avoid the thick crockery of 
a hotel. 

For a country dinner the table should be set near a 
window, or windows, if possible ; in fine weather, in 
the hall or on the wide veranda. If the veranda 
have long windows, the servant can pass in and out 
easily. There should be a side -board and a side- 
table, relays of knives, forks and spoons, dishes and 
glasses not in use, and a table from which the ser- 
vant can help the soup and carve the joint, as on a 
hot day no one wishes to see these two dishes on 
the table. A maid-servant should be taught by her 
mistress how to carve, in order to save time and 
trouble. Soup for a country dinner should be clear 
bouillon, with macaroni and cheese, creme tVasperge, 
or Julienne, which has in it all the vegetables of the 
season. Heavy mock-turtle, bean soup, or ox-tail are 
not in order for a country dinner. If the lady of the 
house have a talent for cookery, she should have her 
soups made the day before, all the grease removed 
when the stock is cold, and season them herself. 

It is better in a country house to have some cold 
dish that will serve as a resource if the cook should 
leave. Melton veal, which can be prepared on Mon- 
day and which will last until Saturday, is an excel- 

15 



226 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

lent stand-by; and a cold boiled or roast ham should 
always be on the side -board. A hungry man can 
make a comfortable dinner of cold ham and a baked 
potato. 

Every country householder should try to have a 
vegetable garden, for pease, beans, young turnips, and 
salads fresh gathered are very superior to those which 
even the best grocer furnishes. And of all the lux- 
uries of a country dinner the fresh vegetables are the 
greatest. Especially does the tired citizen, fed on 
the esculents of the corner grocery, delight in the 
green pease, the crisp lettuce, the undefiled straw- 
berries. One old epicure of New York asks of his 
country friends only a piece of boiled salt pork with 
vegetables, a potato salad, some cheese, five large 
strawberries, and a cup of coffee. The large family 
of salads help to make the country dinner delightful. 
Given a clear beef soup, a slice of fresh-boiled salmon, 
a bit of spring lamb with mint sauce, some green pease 
and fresh potatoes, a salad of lettuce, or sliced toma- 
toes, or potatoes with a bit of onion, and you have a 
dinner fit for a Brillat-Savarin ; or vary it with a pair 
of boiled chickens, and a jardiniere made of all the 
pease, beans, potatoes, cauliflower, fresh beets, of the 
day before, simply treated to a bath of vinegar and oil 
and pepper and salt. The lady who has conquered 
the salad question may laugh at the caprices of cooks, 
and defy the hour at which the train leaves. 

What so good as an egg salad for a hungry com- 
pany ? Boil the eggs hard and slice them, cover with 
a mayonnaise dressing, and put a few lettuce leaves 
about the plate, and you have a sustaining meal. 



SERVICE IN COUNTRY HOUSES. 227 

Many families have cold meats and warm vegetables 
for their midday dinner during the summer. This is 
not healthy. Let all the dinner be cold if the meats 
are; and a dinner of cold roast beef, of salad, and 
cold asparagus, dressed with pepper, oil, and vinegar, 
is not a bad meal. 

It is better for almost everybody, however, to eat a 
hot dinner, even in hot w^eather, as the digestion is 
aided by the friendly power of the caloric. Indeed \ 

J dyspepsia, almost universal with Americans, is attrib- 
uted to the habit which prevails in this country above 
L all others of drinking ice-water. ) 

Carafes of ice-water, a silver dish for ice, and a pair 
of ice-tongs, should be put on the table for a summer 
dinner. For desserts there is an almost endless suc- 
cession, and with cream in her dairy, and a patent ice- 
cream freezer in her cuisine, the house-keeper need 
not lack delicate and delicious dishes of berries and 
fruits. No hot puddings should be served, or heavy 
pies; but the fruit tart is an excellent sweet, and 
should be made d ravir / the pastry should melt in 
the mouth, and the fruit be stewed with a great deal 
of sugar. Cream should be put on the table in large 
glass pitchers, for it is a great luxury of the country 
and of the summer season. 

The cold custards, Charlotte -Russe, and creams 
stiffened with gelatine and delicately flavored, are 
very nice for a summer dinner. So is home-made 
cake, when well made : this, indeed, is always its 
only " excuse for being." 

Stewed fruit is a favorite dessert in England, and 
the gooseberry, which here is but little used, is much 



228 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

liked thqre. Americans prefer to eat fruit fresh, and 
therefore have not learned to stew it. Stewing is, 
however, a branch of cookery well worth the atten- 
tion of a first-class house -keeper. It makes even 
the canned abominations better, and the California 
canned apricot stewed with sugar is one of the most 
delightful of sweets, and very wholesome ; canned 
peaches stewed with sugar lose the taste of tin, which 
sets the teeth on edge, and stewed currants are de- 
licious. 

Every house-keeper should learn to cook macaroni 
well. It is worth while to spend an hour at Mar- 
tinelli's, for this Italian staple is economical, and ex- 
tremely palatable if properly prepared. Rice, too, 
should have a place in a summer bill of fare, as an 
occasional substitute for potatoes, which some people 
cannot eat. 

For summer dinners there should never be any- 
thing on the table when the guests sit down but the 
flowers and the dessert, the ice -pitchers or carafes, 
and bowls of ice, the glass, china, and silver : the 
last three should all be simple, and not profuse. 

Many families now, fearing burglars, use only 
plated spoons, knives, forks, and dishes at their coun- 
try houses. Modern plate is so very good that there 
is less objection to this than formerly ; but the gen- 
uine house -keeper loves the real silver spoons and 
forks, and prefers, to use them. 

The ostentatious display of silver, however, is bad 
taste at a country dinner. Glass dishes are much 
more elegant and appropriate, and quite expensive 
enough to bear the title of luxuries. 



SUMMER DINNERS. 229 

Avoid all greasy and heavy dishes. Good roast 
beef, mutton, lamb, veal, chickens, and fresh fish are 
always in order, for the system craves the support of 
these solids in summer as well as in winter; but do 
not offer pork, unless in the most delicate form, and 
then in small quantities. Fried salt pork, if not too 
fat, is always a pleasant addition to the broiled bird. 

Broiled fish, broiled chicken, broiled ham, broiled 
steaks and chops, are always satisfactory. The grid- 
iron made St. Lawrence fit for Heaven, and its qual- 
ities have been elevating and refining ever since. 
Nothing can be less healthy or less agreeable to the 
taste at a summer dinner than fried food. The fry- 
ing-pan should have been thrown into the fire long 
ago, and burned up. 

The house-keeper living near the sea has an ample 
store to choose from in the toothsome crab, clam, lob- 
ster, and other Crustacea. The fresh fish, the roast 
clams, etc., take the place of the devilled kidneys and 
broiled bones of the winter. But every housewife 
should study the markets of her neighborhood. In 
many rural districts the butchers give away, or throw 
to the dogs, sweetbreads and other morsels which are 
the very essence of luxury. Calf's head is rejected 
by the rural buyer, and a Frenchman who had the 
physiologic du goiht at his finger-ends, declared that 
in a country place, not five miles from New York, 
he gave luxurious dinners on what the butcher threw 
away. 






230 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

LUNCHEONS, INFORMAL AND SOCIAL. 

The informal lunch is perhaps less understood in 
this country than in any other, because it is rarely 
necessary. In the country it is called early dinner, 
children's dinner, or ladies' dinner ; in the city, when 
the gentlemen are all down town, then blossoms out 
the elaborate ladies' lunch. 

But in England, at a country house, and indeed in 
London, luncheon is a recognized and very delightful 
meal, at which the most distinguished men and wom- 
en meet oyer a joint and a cherry tart, and talk and 
laugh for an hour without the restraint of the late 
and formal dinner. 

It occupies a prominent place in the history of 
hospitality, and Lord Houghton, among others, was 
famous for his unceremonious lunches. As it is un- 
derstood to be an informal meal, the invitations are 
generally sent only a short time before the day for 
which the recipient is invited, and are written in the 
first person. Lord Houghton's were apt to be simply, 
" Come and lunch with me to-morrow." At our prom- 
inent places of summer resort, ladies who have houses 
of their own generally give their male friends a carte 
blanche invitation to luncheon. They are expected 
to avail themselves of it without ceremony, and at 



INFORMAL LUNCHEONS. 231 

Newport the table is always laid with the " extra 
knife and fork," or two or three, as may be thought 
necessary. Ladies, however, should be definitely asked 
to this meal as to others. 

It is a very convenient meal, as it permits of an 
irregular number, of a superfluity of ladies or gentle- 
men ; it is chatty and easy, and is neither troublesome 
nor expensive. 

The hour of luncheon is stated, but severe punct- 
uality is not insisted upon. A guest who is told that 
he may drop in at half -past one o'clock every day will 
be forgiven if he comes as late as two. 

Ladies may come in in their hats or bonnets ; gen- 
tlemen in lawn-tennis suits, if they wish. It is in- 
cumbent upon the hostess but not upon the host 
to be present. It is quite immaterial where the 
guests sit, and they go in separately, not arm -in- 
arm. 

Either white or colored table-cloths are equally 
proper, and some people use the bare mahogany, but 
this is unusual. 

The most convenient and easy-going luncheons are 
served from the buffet or side-table, and the guests 
help themselves to cold ham, tongue, roast beef, etc. 
The fruit and wine and bread should stand on the. 
table. 

Each chair has in front of it two plates, a napkin 
with bread, two knives, two forks and spoons, a small 
salt-cellar, and three glasses — a tumbler for water, a 
claret glass, and a sherry glass. 

Bouillon is sometimes offered in summer, but not 
often. If served well, it should be in cups. Disl 



232 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

of dressed salad, a cold fowl, game, or hot chops, can 
be put before the hostess or passed by the servant. 
Soup and fish are never offered at these luncheons. 
Some people prefer a hot lunch, and chops, birds on 
toast, or a beefsteak, with mashed potatoes, asparagus, 
or green pease, are suitable dishes. 

It is proper at a country place to offer a full lunch- 
eon, or to have a cold joint on the sideboard ; and 
after the more serious part of the luncheon has been 
removed, the hostess can dismiss the servants, and 
serve the ice-cream or tart herself, with the assistance 
of her guests. Clean plates, knives, and forks should 
be in readiness. 

In England a "hot joint" is always served from 
the sideboard. In fact, an English luncheon is ex- 
actly what a plain American dinner was formerly — a 
roast of mutton or beef, a few vegetables, a tart, some 
fruit, and a glass of sherry. But we have changed 
the practice considerably, and now our luxurious coun- 
try offers nothing plain. 

In this country one waiter generally remains dur- 
ing the whole meal, and serves the table as he would 
at dinner — only with less ceremony. It is perfectly 
proper at luncheon for any one to rise and help him- 
self to what he wishes. 

Tea and coffee are never served after luncheon 
in the drawing-room or dining-room. People are 
not expected to remain long after luncheon, as the 
lady of the house may have engagements for the 
afternoon. 

In many houses the butler arranges the luncheon- 
table with flowers or fruit, plates of thin bread-and- 



MATERIALS FOR LUNCHEONS. 233 

butter, jellies, creams, cakes, and preserves, a dish of 
cold salmon mayonnaise, and decanters of sherry and 
claret. He places a cold ham or chicken on the side- 
board, and a pitcher of ice-water on a side-table, and 
then leaves the dining-room, and takes no heed of the 
-r wants of humanity until dinner-time. An under- 
man or footman takes the place of this lofty being, 
and waits at table. 

In more modest houses, where there is only a maid- 
servant or one man, all arrangements for the lunch- 
eon and for expected guests should be made immedi- 
ately after breakfast. 

If the children dine with the family at luncheon, 
it, of course, becomes an important meal, and should 
include one hot dish and a simple dessert. 

It is well for people living in the country, and with 
a certain degree of style, to study up the methods of 
making salads and cold dishes, for these come in so 
admirably for luncheon that they often save a hostess 
great mortification. By attention to small details a 
very humble repast may be most elegant. A silver 
bread-basket for the thin slices of bread, a pretty 
cheese-dish, a napkin around the cheese, pats of but- 
ter in a pretty dish, flowers in vases, fruits neatly 
served — these things cost little, but they add a z 
to the pleasures of the table. 

If a hot luncheon is served, it is not etiquette to put 
the vegetables on the table as at dinner ; they should 
be handed by the waiter. The luncheon-table is al- 
ready full of the articles for dessert, and there is no 
place for the vegetables. The hot entries or cold en- 
trees are placed before the master or mistress, and 



234 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

each, guest is asked what he prefers. The whole 
aspect of luncheon is thus made perfectly informal. 

If a lady gives a more formal lunch, and has it 
served d la Husse, the first entree — let us say chops 
and green pease — -is handed by the waiter, commen- 
cing with the lady who sits on the right hand of the 
master of the house. This is followed by vegetables. 
Plates having been renewed, a salad and some cold 
ham can be offered. The waiter fills the glasses with 
sherry, or offers claret. When champagne is served 
at lunch, it is immediately after the first dish has 
been served, and claret and sherry are not then given 
unless asked for. 

After the salad a fresh plate, with a dessert-spoon 
and small fork upon it, is placed before each person. 
The ice-cream, pie, or pudding is then placed in front 
of the hostess, who cuts it, and puts a portion on 
each plate. After these dainties have been discussed, 
a glass plate, serviette, and finger-bowl are placed be- 
fore each guest for fruit. The servant takes the plate 
from his mistress after she has filled it, and hands it 
to the lady of first consideration, and so on. When 
only members of the family are present at luncheon, 
the mistress of the house is helped first. 

Fruit tarts, pudding, sweet omelette, jellies, blanc- 
mange, and ice-cream are all proper dessert for lunch- 
eon; also luncheon cake, or the plainer sorts of loaf- 
cake. 

It is well in all households, if possible, for the chil- 
dren to breakfast and lunch with their parents. The 
teaching of table manners cannot be begun too soon. 
But children should never be allowed to trouble 



LUNCHEON SERVICE. 235 

guests. If not old enough to behave well at table, 
guests should not be invited to the meals at which 
they are present. It is very trying to parents, guests, 
and servants. 

When luncheon is to be an agreeable social repast, 
which guests are expected to share, then the children 
should dine elsewhere. ISTo mother succeeds better 
in the rearing of her children than she who has a 
nursery dining-room, where, under her own eye, her 
bantlings are properly fed. It is not so much trouble, 
either, as one would think. 

Table mats are no longer used in stylish houses, 
either at luncheon or at dinner. The waiter should 
have a coarse towel in the butler's pantry, and wipe 
each dish before he puts it on the table. 

Menu-cards are never used at luncheon. Salt-cel- 
lars and small water carafes may be placed up and 
down the luncheon-table. 

In our country, where servants run away and leave 
their mistress when she is expecting guests, it is well to 
be able to improvise a dish from such materials as may 
be at hand. Nothing is better than a cod mayonnaise. 
A cod boiled in the morning is a friend in the after- 
noon. When it is cold remove the skin and bones. 
For sauce put some thick cream in a porcelain sauce- 
pan, and thicken it with corn-flour which has been 
mixed with cold water. When it begins to boil, stir 
in the beaten yolks of two eggs. As it cools, beat it 
well to prevent it from becoming lumpy, and when 
nearly cold, stir in the juice of two lemons, a little 
tarragon vinegar, a pinch of salt, and a soupgon of 
Cayenne pepper. Peel and slice some very ripe toma- 



236 MANSTEKS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

toes or cold potatoes; steep them in vinegar, with Cay- 
enne, powdered ginger, and plenty of salt; lay these 
around the fish, and cover with the cream sauce. 
This makes a very elegant cold dish for luncheon. 
The tomatoes or potatoes should be taken out of the 
vinegar and carefully drained before they are placed 
around the fish. 

Some giblets carefully saved from the ducks, geese, 
or chickens of yesterday's dinner should be stew ed in 
good beef stock, and then set away to cool. Put them 
in a stewpan with dried split pease, and boil them 
until they are reduced to pulp; serve this mixture 
hot on toast, and, if properly flavored with salt and 
pepper, you have a good luncheon dish. 

Vegetable salads of beet-root, potatoes, and lettuce 
are always delicious, and the careful housewife who 
rises early in the morning and provides a round of 
cold corned beef, plenty of bread, and a luncheon cake, 
need not regret the ephemeral cook, or fear the coming 
city guest. 

Every country housewife should learn to garnish 
dishes with capers, a border of water - cresses, plain 
parsley, or vegetables cut into fancy forms. 

Potatoes, eggs, and cold hashed meats, in their un- 
adorned simplicity, do not come under the head of 
luxuries. But if the hashed meat is carefully warmed 
and well flavored, and put on toast, if the potatoes are 
chopped and browned and put around the meat, if the 
eggs are boiled, sliced, and laid around as a garnish, 
and a few capers and a border of parsley added, you 
have a Delmonico ragout that Brillat-Savarin would 
have enjoyed. 



FORKS AND SPOONS. 237 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE FORK AXD THE SPOON. 

A correspondent writes, "How shall I carry my 
fork to my mouth?" The fork should be raised lat- 
erally to the mouth with the right hand; the elbow 
should never be crooked, so as to bring the hand round 
at a right angle, or the fork directly opposite the 
mouth. The mother cannot begin too early to incul- 
cate good manners at the table, and among the first 
things that young children should learn is the proper 
use of the fork. 

Again, the fork should not be overloaded. To take 
meat and vegetables and pack them on the poor fork, 
as if it were a beast of burden, is a common Amer- 
ican vulgarity, born of our hurried way of eating at 
railway- stations and hotels. But it is an unhealthy 
and an ill-mannered habit. To take but little on 
the fork at a time, a moderate mouthful, shows good 
manners and refinement. The knife must never be 
put into the mouth at any time — that is a remnant of 
barbarism. 

Another correspondent asks, " Should cheese be eat- 
en with a fork?" We say, decidedly, "Yes," although 
good authorities declare that it may be put on a morsel 
of bread with a knife, and thus conveyed to the mouth. 
Of course we refer to the soft cheeses — like Gargon- 



238 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

zola, Brie, cream-cheese, Neufchatel, Limburger, and 
the like — which are hardly more manageable than but- 
ter. Of the hard cheeses, one may convey a morsel to 
the mouth with the thumb and forefinger ; but, as a 
general rule, it is better to use the fork. 

Now as to the spoon : it is to be used for soup, for 
strawberries and cream, for all stewed fruit and pre- 
serves, and for melons, which, from their juiciness, 
cannot be conveniently eaten with a fork. Peaches and 
cream, all the " wet dishes," as Mrs. Glasse was wont 
to call them, must be eaten with a spoon. Roman 
punch is always eaten with a spoon. 

On elegant tables, each plate or "cover" is ac- 
companied by two large silver knives, a small silver 
knife and fork for fish, a small fork for the oysters 
on the half-shell, a large table-spoon for soup, and 
three large forks. The napkin is folded in the centre, 
with a piece of bread in it. As the dinner progresses, 
the knife and fork and spoon which have been used 
are taken away with the plate. This saves confusion, 
and the servant has not to bring fresh knives and forks 
all the time. Fish should be eaten with silver knife and 
fork ; for if it is full of bones, like shad, for instance, it 
is very difficult to manage it without the aid of a knife. 

For sweetbreads, cutlets, roast beef, etc., the knife 
is also necessary ; but for the croquettes, rissoles, hou- 
chees d la Heine, timbales, and dishes of that class, the 
fork alone is needed. A majority of the made dishes 
in which the French excel are to be eaten w T ith the 
fork. 

After the dinner has been eaten, and the dessert 
reached, we must see to it that everything is cleared 



USES OF THE FORK. 239 

off but the table-cloth, which is now never removed. 
A dessert -plate is put before each guest, and a gold 
or silver spoon, a silver dessert spoon and fork, and 
often a queer little combination of fork and spoon, 
called an " ice-spoon. 5 ' 

In England, strawberries are always served with 
the green stems, and each one is taken up with the 
fingers, dipped in sugar, and thus eaten. Many for- 
eigners pour wine over their strawberries, and then 
eat them with a fork, but this seems to be detrimental 
to the natural flavor of the kins; of berries. 

Pears and apples should be peeled with a silver 
knife, cut into quarters, and then picked up with the 
fingers. Oranges should be peeled, and cut or sepa- 
rated, as the eater chooses. Grapes should be eaten 
from behind the half-closed hand, the stones and skin 
falling into the fingers unobserved, and thence to the 
plate. Never swallow the stones of small fruits; it is 
extremely dangerous. The pineapple is almost the 
only fruit which requires both knife and fork. 

So much has the fork come into use of late that a 
wit observed that he took everything with it but af- 
ternoon tea. The thick chocolate, he observed, often 
served at afternoon entertainments, could be eaten 
comfortably with a fork, particularly the whipped 
cream on top of it. 

A knife and fork are both used in eating salad, if it 
is not cut up before serving. A large lettuce leaf can- 
not be easily managed without a knife, and of course 
the fork must be used to carry it to the mouth. Thus, 
as bread, butter, and cheese are served with the salad. 
the salad knife and fork are really essential. 



240 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Salt-cellars are now placed at eacli plate, and it is 
not improper to take salt with your knife. 

Dessert-spoons and small forks do not form a part 
of the original " cover ;" that is, they are not put on 
at the beginning of the dinner, but are placed before 
the guests according as they are needed ; as, for in- 
stance, when the Roman punch arrives before the 
game, and afterwards when the plum -pudding or 
pastry is served before the ices. 

The knives and forks are placed on each side of the 
plate, ready for the hand. 

For the coffee after dinner a very small spoon is 
served, as a large one would be out of place in the 
small cups that are used. Indeed, the variety of forks 
and spoons now in use on a well-furnished table is as- 
tonishing. 

One of our esteemed correspondents asks, "How 
much soup should be given to each person?" A half- 
ladleful is quite enough, unless it is a country dinner, 
where a full 'ladlef ul may be given without offence; 
but do not fill the soup-plate. 

In carving a joint of fowl the host ought to make 
sure of the condition of both knife and fork. Of course 
a good carver sees to both before dinner. The knife 
should be of the best cutlery, well sharpened, and the 
fork long, strong, and furnished with a guard. 

In using the spoon be very careful not to put it too 
far into the mouth. It is a fashion with children to 
polish their spoons in a somewhat savage fashion, 
but the guest at a dinner-party should remember, in 
the matter of the dessert-spoon especially (which is a 
rather large implement for the mouth), not to allow 



THE SPOON. 241 

even the clogging influences of cabinet pudding to 
induce him to give his spoon too much leeway; as 
in all etiquette of the table, the spoon has its difficul- 
ties and dangers. Particularly has the soup-spoon its 
Scylla and Chary bdis, and if a careless eater make a 
hissing sound as he eats his soup, the well-bred diner- 
out looks round with dismay. 

There are always people happy in their fashion of 
eating, as in everything else. There is no such infal- 
lible proof of good-breeding and of early usage as the 
conduct of a man or woman at dinner. But, as every 
one has not had the advantage of early training, it is 
well to study these minute points of table etiquette, 
that one may learn how to eat without offending the 
sensibility of the well-bred. Especially study the fork 
and the spoon. There is, no doubt, a great diversity 
of opinion on the Continent with regard to the fork. 
It is a common German fashion, even with princes, 
to put the knife into the mouth. Italians are not al- 
ways particular as to its use, and cultivated Russians, 
Swedes, Poles, and Danes often eat with their knives 
or forks indiscriminately. 

But Austria, which follows French fashions, the 
Anglo-Saxon race in England, America, and the colo- 
nies, all French people, and those elegant Russians 
who emulate French manners, deem the fork the prop- 
er medium of communication between the plate and 
the mouth. 

10 



242 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

NAPKINS AND TABLE-CLOTHS. 

The elegance of a table depends essentially upon its 
napery. The plainest of meals is made a banquet if 
the linen be fresh, fine, and smooth, and the most 
sumptuous repast can be ruined by a soiled and crum- 
pled table-cloth. The housewife who wishes to con- 
duct her house in elegance must make up her mind 
to use five or six sets of napkins, and to have several 
dozens of each ready for possible demands. 

A napkin should never be put on the table a second 
time until it has been rewashed ; therefore, napkin- 
rings should be abandoned — relegated to the nursery 
tea-table. 

Breakfast napkins are of a smaller size than dinner 
napkins, and are very pretty if they bear the initial 
letter of the family in the centre. Those of fine, 
double damask, with a simple design, such as a snow- 
drop or a mathematical figure, to match the table- 
cloth, are also pretty. In the end, the economy in 
the wear pays a young house-keeper to invest well in 
the best of napery — double damask, good Irish linen. 
Never buy poor or cheap napkins ; they are worn out 
almost immediately by washing. 

Coarse, heavy napkins are perhaps proper for the 
nursery and children's table. If children dine with 



TABLE LINEN*. 243 

their parents, they should have a special set of nap- 
kins for their use, and some very careful mammas 
make these with tapes to tie around the youthful 
necks. It is better in a large family, where there 
are children, to have heavy and coarse table-linen for 
every-day use. It is not an economy to buy colored 
cloths, for they must be washed as often as if they 
were white, and no color stands the hard usage of the 
laundry as well as pure white. 

Colored napery is, therefore, the luxury of a well- 
appointed country house, and has its use in making 
the breakfast and luncheon table look a little unlike 
the dinner. Never use a parti -colored damask for 
the dinner-table. 

Those breakfast cloths of pink, or yellow, or light- 
blue and white, or drab, are very pretty with napkins 
to match; but after having been washed a few times 
they become very dull in tint, and are not as agreea- 
ble to the eye as white, which grows whiter with 
every summer's bleaching. Ladies who live in the 
city should try to send all their napery to the coun- 
try at least once a year, and let it lie on the grass 
for a good bleaching. It seems to keep cleaner after- 
wards. 

For dinner, large and handsome napkins, carefully 
ironed and folded simply, with a piece of bread in- 
side, should lie at each plate. These should be re- 
moved when the fruit course is brought, and with each 
finger-bowl should be a colored napkin, with which 
to dry the fingers. 

Pretty little fanciful doyleys are now also put under 
the finger-bowl, merely to be looked at. Embroidered 



244 MANNEKS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

with quaint designs, these little three-inch things are 
very ornamental ; but the real and serviceable doyley 
should not be forgotten, and may be laid either beside 
or over the top of the finger-bowl. 

Many ladies are so extravagant that they have a 
second napkin of small size put on for that part of 
the dessert which precedes the fruit, but this involves 
so much trouble to both the guest and the waiter that 
it is not ordinarily done. 

The napkins made at Berlin, with drawn thread and 
knotted fringe and lace effects, are very handsome. 
They are also made at the South Kensington schools, 
and in Paris, and by the Decorative Art Society in New 
York, and are beautifully wrought with monogram 
and crest in red, white, and blue thread. But no napkin 
is ever more thoroughly elegant than the very thick, 
fine, and substantial plain damask, which becomes 
more pure and smooth every time that it is cleansed. 

However, as one of our great dinner-givers in New 
York has ordered twenty-four dozen of the handsome, 
drawn-thread napkins from one establishment at Ber- 
lin, we must conclude that they will become the fashion. 

When breakfast is made a formal meal — that is, 
when company is invited to come at a stated hour— 
serviettes, or large dinner-napkins, must be placed at 
each plate, as for a dinner. But they are never used 
at a " stand-up " breakfast, nor are doyleys or finger- 
bowls. 

If any accident happens, such as the spilling of a 
glass of wine or the upsetting of a plate, the debris 
should be carefully cleared away, and the waiter 
should spread a clean napkin over the desecrated 



NAPKINS. 245 

table-cloth. Large, white napkins are invariably used 
at luncheon, and the smaller ones kept for breakfast 
and tea. Some ladies like the little, fringed napkins 
for tea, but to look well these must be very carefully 
washed and ironed. 

Never fasten your napkin around your neck ; lay it 
across your knees, convenient to the hand, and lift one 
corner only to wipe the mouth. Men who wear a 
mustache are permitted to "saw" the mouth with the 
napkin, as if it were a bearing-rein, but for ladies this 
would look too masculine. 

Napkins at hotels are now folded, in a half-wet 
condition, into all sorts of shapes : a goose, a swan, a 
ship, a high boot, are all favorite and fanciful designs ; 
but this is a dirty fashion, requiring the manipulation 
of hands which are not always fresh, and as the nap- 
kin must be damp at the folding, it is not always dry 
when shaken out. Nothing is so unhealthy as a damp 
napkin; it causes agony to a delicate and nervous lady, 
a man with the rose-cold, a person with neuralgia or 
rheumatism, and is offensive to every one. Never al- 
low a napkin to be placed on the table until it has been 
well aired. There is often a conspiracy between the 
waiter and the laundress in great houses, both wishing 
to shirk work, the result of which is that the napkins, 
not prepared at the proper time, are put on the table 
damp. 

A house-keeper should have a large chest to contain 
napery which is not to be used every day. This re- 
served linen should be washed and aired once a year 
at least, to keep it from moulding and becoming yellow. 

Our Dutch ancestors were very fond of enriching 



246 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

a chest of this kind, and many housewives in New 
York and Albany are to-day using linen (brought from 
Holland three hundred years ago. 

The napery made in Ireland has, however, in our 
day taken the place of that manufactured in other 
countries. It is good, cheap, and sometimes very 
handsome, and if it can be bought unadulterated with 
cotton it will last many years. 

Very little starch should be put in napkins. No 
one wishes to wipe a delicate lip on a board, and a 
stiff napkin is very like that commodity. 

At dinner-parties in England, in the days of William 
the Fourth, a napkin was handed with each plate. As 
the guest took his plate and new napkin, he allowed 
the one which he had used to fall to the floor, and 
when he went away from the table he left a snowy 
pile of napery behind him. 

The use of linen for the table is one of the oldest 
of fashions. The early Italian tables were served with 
such beautiful lace -worked napkins that we cannot 
equal them to-day. Queen Elizabeth's napkins were 
edged with lace made in Flanders, and were an im- 
portant item of expense in her day-book. 

Fringed, embroidered, and colored napkins made of 
silk are used by Chinese and Japanese magnates. 
These articles may be washed, and are restored to 
their original purity by detergent agents that are un- 
known to us. The Chinese also use little napkins of 
paper, which are very convenient for luncheon baskets 
and picnics. 

One of our correspondents asks us if she should fold 
her napkin before leaving the table. 



THE EMBROIDERED DOYLEY. 247 

At a fashionable meal, no. At a social tea or break- 
fast, yes, if her hostess does so. There is no absolute 
law on this subject. 

At a fashionable dinner no one folds his napkin. 
He lets it drop to the floor, or lays it by the side of 
his plate unfolded. When the fruit napkin is brought 
he takes it from the glass plate on which it is laid, 
and either places it at his right hand or .across his 
knee, and the " illuminated rag," as some wit called 
the little embroidered doyley, which is not meant for 
use, is, after having been examined and admired, laid 
on the table, beside the finger-bowl. These pretty 
little trifles can serve several times the purpose of or- 
namenting the finger-bowl. 

Napkins, when laid away in a chest or drawer, 
should have some pleasant, cleanly herb like lavender 
or sweet-grass, or the old-fashioned clover, or bags of 
Oriental orris-root, put between them, that they may 
come to the table smelling of these delicious scents. 

Nothing is more certain to destroy the appetite of 
a nervous dyspeptic than a napkin that smells of 
greasy soap. There is a laundry soap now in use 
which leaves a very unpleasant odor in the linen, and 
napkins often smell so strongly of it as to take away 
the desire for food. 

Perhaps the influence of Delmonico upon the public 
has been in nothing more strongly shown than in the 
effect produced by his always immaculate napery. It 
was not common in American eating-houses, when he 
began, to offer clean table-cloths and clean napkins. 
Now no decent diner will submit to any other than a 
clean napkin. 



248 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Every lady, therefore, who aspires to elegant house- 
keeping, should remember that she must never allow 
the same napkin to be put on her table twice. Once 
used, it must be sent to the laundry before it is put 
on the table again. 



SERVANTS IN COLONIAL TIMES. 249 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

SERVANTS, THEIR DRESS AND DUTIES. 

As we read that a West Point hotel-keeper has re- 
cently dismissed all his waiters who would not shave 
off their mustaches, we must begin to believe that the 
heretofore heedless American is considering the ap- 
pearance of his house and carriage-servants. In the 
early days of the republic, before Thomas Jefferson 
tied his horse's rein to the palings of the fence and 
sauntered into the Capitol to be inaugurated, the 
aristocrats of the various cities had a livery for their 
servants. But after such a dash of cold water in the 
face of established usage by the Chief Magistrate of 
the country, many of the old forms and customs of 
Colonial times fell into disuse, and among others the 
wearing of a livery by serving -men. A constantly 
declining grade of shabbiness was the result of this, 
as the driver of the horses wore a coat and hat of the 
same style as his master, only less clean and new. 
Like many of our American ideas so good in theory, 
the outcome of this attempt at "Liberty, Equality, 
and Fraternity," was neither conducive to neatness 
nor elegance. 

But so strongly was the prejudice against liveries 
instilled into the public mind that only seven years 
ago a gentleman of the most aristocratic circle of aris- 



250 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

tocratic Philadelphia declared that he refrained from 
haying a liveried servant behind his carriage from fear 
of shocking public opinion. In New York the presence 
of a large, foreign, social element long ago brought 
about a revulsion of opinion in this matter, and now 
most persons who desire a neat, plain, and appropriate 
style of dress for their coachmen and footmen put 
them in a livery, for which the master pays. Those 
who are particular in such matters do not allow a wait- 
er or a footman to wear a mustache, and require all 
men-servants to be clean-shaven, except the coachman, 
who is permitted to wear whiskers. Each must have 
his hair cut short, and the waiter must wear white 
gloves while waiting at table or when handing re- 
freshments ; even a glass of water on a silver salver 
must be brought with a gloved hand. 

Many ladies have much trouble in impressing upon 
their men-servants the necessity for personal neat- 
ness. The ordinary attire of a butler is a black 
dress-coat, with white cravat and white cotton gloves. 
A waiter who attends the door in a large estab- 
lishment, and who is one of many servants, is usually 
in a quiet livery — a frock-coat with brass buttons, 
and a striped waistcoat. Some families affect the 
scarlet waistcoat for their footman, which, indeed, 
may be used with very good effect for the negro 
servant. 

Neatness is indispensable; a slovenly and inattentive 
servant betrays a slovenly household. Yet servants 
often do their employers great injustice. They are 
slow to respond to the bell, they give uncivil answers, 
they deny one person and admit another, they fail to 



TEACHING OF SERVANTS. 251 

deliver notes, they are insolent, they neglect the or- 
ders of the mistress when she is out. We cannot ex- 
pect perfection in our domestic service, but it is pos- 
sible, by painstaking and patient teaching, to create a 
respectable and helpful serving class. Servants are 
very apt to take their tone from their employers — to 
be civil if they are civil, and insolent if they are in- 
solent. The head of the house is very apt to be cop- 
ied by his flunkies. One primal law we must mention 
— a hostess should never reprove her servants in the 
presence of her guests; it is cruel both to guest and 
servant, and always shows the hostess in an unamiable 
light. "Whatever may go wrong, the lady of the 
house should remain calm; if she is anguished, who 
can be happy ? 

We have not here, nominally, that helpful treasure 
known in England as the parlor-maid. We call her 
a waitress, and expect her to do all the work of one 
floor. Such a person can be trained by a good house- 
keeper to be a most admirable servant. She must be 
told to rise early, to attend to the sweeping of the 
door-steps, to open the blinds, to light the fires, and 
to lay the breakfast-table. She must appear in a neat 
calico dress, white apron and cap, and wait upon the 
family at breakfast. After breakfast, the gentlemen 
will expect her to brush their hats, to bring overcoats 
and overshoes, and to find the umbrellas. She must 
answer the door-bell as well, so should be nimble-foot- 
ed and quick-witted. When breakfast is over, she must 
remove the dishes and wash them, clean the silver, and 
prepare for the next meal. In well-regulated house- 
holds there is a day for sweeping, a day for silvrr- 



252 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

cleaning, a clay for mirror-polishing, and another for 
making bright and neat the fireplaces ; but each one 
of these duties requires a certain share of attention 
every day. The parlor must be dusted, and the fires 
attended to, of course, so the parlor-maid, or the wait- 
ress, in a large family has much to do. The best girls 
for this arduous situation are English, but they are 
very difficult to procure. The Germans are not apt 
to remain long with one family. The best available 
parlor -maids are Irishwomen who have lived some 
time in this country. 

A servant often sins from ignorance, therefore time 
spent in teaching her is not wasted. She should be 
supplied with such utensils as facilitate work, and 
one very good house-keeper declares that the virtue 
of a waitress depends upon an infinity of crash. And 
there is no doubt that a large supply of towels is a 
constant suggestion of cleanliness that is a great moral 
support to a waitress. 

In these days, when parlors are filled with bric-a- 
brac, a parlor-maid has no time to do laundry-work, 
except such part of it as may pertain to her per- 
sonally. The best of all arrangements is to hire a 
laundress, who will do all the washing of the house. 
Even in a very economical household this has been 
found to be the best plan, otherwise there is always 
an unexplained delay when the bell rings. The ap- 
pearance at the door of a dishevelled maid, with arms 
covered with soapsuds, is not ornamental. If a cook 
can be found who will also undertake to do the wash- 
ing and ironing, it is a better and more satisfactory 
arrangement. But in our growing prosperity this 



SERVANT AND MISTRESS. 253 

functionary has assumed new and extraordinary im- 
portance, and will do nothing but cook. 

A young house-keeper beginning her life in a great 
city finds herself frequently confronted with the ne- 
cessity of having four servants — a cook, a laundress, a 
waiter or parlor-maid (sometimes both), and a cham- 
ber-maid. Xone of these excellent auxiliaries is will- 
ing to do the other's work: they generally quarrel. So 
the first experience of house-keeping is not agreeable. 
But it is possible to find two servants who, if proper- 
ly trained, will do all the service of a small family, 
and do it well. 

The mistress must carefully define the work of 
each, or else hire them with the understanding that 
neither shall ever say, "This is not my work." It is 
sometimes quite impossible to define what is the exact 
duty of each servant. Our house - keeping in this 
country is so chaotic, and our frequent changes of 
house and fortune cause it to partake so much of the 
nature of a provisional government, that every wom- 
an must be a Louis Xapoleon, and ready for a coup 
d'etat at any moment. 

The one thing which every lady must firmly de- 
mand from her servants is respect. The harassed and 
troubled American woman who has to cope with the 
worst servants in the world — the ill-trained, incapa- 
ble, and vicious peasantry of Europe, who come here 
to be "as good as anybody,'' and who see that it is 
ible to make a living in America whether 
they are respectful or not — that woman has a very 
arduous task to perform. 

But she must gain at least outward respect by in- 



254 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

sisting upon having it, and by showing her servants 
that she regards it as even a greater desideratum 
than the efficient discharge of duties. The mistress 
must not lose her temper. She must be calm, im- 
perturbable, and dignified, always. If she gives an 
order, she must insist, at whatever personal cost, that 
it shall be obeyed. Pertinacity and inflexibility on 
this point are well bestowed. 

Where there are children, the nurse is, of course, a 
most important part of the household, and often gives 
more trouble than any of the other servants, for she 
is usually an elderly person, impatient of control, and 
" set in her ways." The mistress must make her obey 
at once. Nurses are only human, and can be made to 
conform to the rules by which humanity is governed. 

Ladies have adopted for their nurses the French 
style of dress—dark stuff gowns, white aprons, and 
caps. French nurses are, indeed, very much the fash- 
ion, as it is deemed all-important that children should 
learn to speak French as soon as they can articulate. 
But it is so difficult to find a French nurse who will 
speak the truth that many mothers have renounced 
the accomplished Gaul and hired the Anglo-Saxon, 
who is often not more veracious. 

No doubt there was better service when servants 
were fewer, and when the mistress looked well after 
the ways of her household, and performed certain do- 
mestic duties herself. In those early days it was she 
who made the best pastry and sweetmeats. It was 
she who wrought at the quilting-frame and netted the 
best bed-curtains. It was she who darned the table- 
cloth, with a neatness ^nd exactness that made the 



CIVILITY OP SERVANTS. 255 

very imperfection a beauty. It was she who made 
the currant wine and the blackberry cordial. She 
knew all the secrets of clear starching, and taught the 
ignorant how to do their work through her educated 
intelligence. She had, however, native Americans to 
teach, and not Irish, Germans, or Swedes. Now, few 
native-born Americans will become servants, and the 
difficulties of the mistress arc thereby increased. 

A servant cannot be too carefully taught her duty 
to visitors. Having first ascertained whether her mis- 
tress is at home or not, in order to save a lady the 
trouble of alighting from her carriage, she should an- 
swer the ring of the door-bell without loss of time. 
She should treat all callers with respect and civility, 
but at the same time she should be able to discrimi- 
nate between friend and foe, and not unwarily admit 
those innumerable cheats, frauds, and beggars who, 
in a respectable garb, force an entrance to one's house 
for the purpose of theft, or perhaps to sell a cement 
for broken crockery, or the last thing in hair-dye. 

Conscientious servants who comprehend their du- 
ties, and who try to perform them, should, after a cer- 
tain course of discipline, be allowed to follow their 
own methods of working. Interference and fault- 
finding injure the temper of an inferior, while sus- 
picion is bad for anybody, and especially operates 
against the making of a erood servant. 

To assure your servants that you believe them to 
be honest is to iix in them the habit of honesty. To 
respect their rights, their hours of recreation, their 
religion, their feelings, to wish them good-night and 
good-morning (after the pretty German fashion), to 



256 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

assist them in the writing of their letters and in the 
proper investment of their earnings, to teach them to 
read and write and to make their clothes, so that they 
may be useful to themselves when they leave servitude 
— all this is the pleasurable duty of a good mistress, 
and such a course makes good servants. 

All ignorant natures seek a leader ; all servants 
like to be commanded by a strong, honest, fair, judi- 
cious mistress. They seek her praise ; they fear her 
censure, not as slaves dread the whip of the tyrant, 
but as soldiers respect their superior officer. Bad 
temper, injustice, and tyranny make eye-service, but 
not heart-service. 

Irresolute persons who do not know their own 
minds, and cannot remember their own orders, make 
very poor masters and mistresses. It is better that 
they should give up the business of house-keeping, 
and betake themselves to the living in hotels or 
boarding-houses with which our English cousins 
taunt us, little knowing that the nomadic life they 
condemn is the outcome of their own failure to make 
good citizens of those offscourings of jail and poor- 
house and Irish shanty which they send to us under 
the guise of domestic servants. - 

Familiarity with servants always arouses their con- 
tempt; a mistress can be kind without being familiar. 
She must remember that the servant looks up to her 
over the great gulf of a different condition of life and 
habit — over the great gulf of ignorance, and that, in 
the order of nature, she should respect not only the 
person in authority, but the being, as superior to her- 
self. This salutary influence is thrown away if the 



FAMILIARITY WITH SERVANTS. 257 

mistress descend to familiarity and intimacy. Cer- 
tain weak mistresses vary their attitude towards their 
servants, first assuming a familiarity of manner which 
is disgusting, and which the servant does not mistake 
for kindness, and then a tyrannical severity which is 
as unreasonable as the familiarity, and, like it, is only 
a spasm of an ill-regulated mind. 

Servants should wear thin shoes in the house, and 
be told to step lightly, not to slam doors, or drop 
china, or to rattle forks and spoons. A quiet servant 
is the most certain of domestic blessings. Xeatness, 
good manners, and faithfulness have often insured a 
stupid servant of no great efficiency a permanent 
home with a family. If to these qualities be added 
a clear head, an active body, and a respectful manner, 
we have that rare article — a perfect servant. 

17 



258 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE HOUSE WITH ONE SERVANT. 

Many large families in this country employ but 
one servant. Although when life was simpler it was 
somewhat easier than it is now to conduct a house 
with such assistance as may be offered by a maid-of- 
all-work, it was necessary even then for the ladies of 
the house to do some portion of the lighter domestic 
work. 

It is a very good plan, when there are several 
daughters in the family, to take turns each to test 
her talent as a house-keeper and organizer. If, how- 
ever, the mistress keep the reins in her own hands, 
she can detail one of these young ladies to sweep 
and dust the parlors, another to attend to the break- 
fast dishes, another to make sure that the maid has 
not neglected any necessary cleansing of the bed- 
rooms. 

A mother with young children must have a thor- 
oughly defined and understood system for the daily 
work to render it possible for one servant to per- 
form it all. 

The maid must rise very early on Monday morning, 
and do some part of the laundry work before break- 
fast. Many old American servants (when there were 
such) put the clothes in water to soak, and sometimes 



CLEANLINESS OF ATTIRE. 259 

to boil, on Sunday night, that night not having the 
religious significance in New England that Saturday- 
night had. 

Nowadays, however, Irish girls expect to have a 
holiday every other Sunday afternoon and evening, 
and it would probably be vain to expect this service 
of them. But at least they should rise by five o'clock, 
and do two hours' good work before it is time to 
prepare the breakfast and lay the table. 

A neat-handed Phyllis will have a clean gown, cap, 
and apron hanging in the kitchen closet, and slip them 
on before she carries in the breakfast, which she has 
cooked and must serve. Some girls show great ta>ct 
in this matter of appearing neat at the right time, 
but many of them have to be taught by the mistress 
to have a clean cap and apron in readiness. The 
mistress usually furnishes these items of her maid's 
attire, and they should be the property of the mis- 
tress, and remain in the family through all changes 
of servants. They can be bought at almost any re- 
pository conducted in the interest of charity for less 
than they can be made at home, and a dozen of them 
in a house greatly improves the appearance of the ser- 
vants. 

The cook, having prepared the breakfast and waited 
at table, places in front of her mistress a neat, wooden 
tub, with a little cotton-yarn mop and two clean tow- 
els, and then retreats to the kitchen with the heavy 
dishes and knives and forks. The lady proceeds to 
wash the glass, silver, and china, draining the tilings 
on a waiter, and wiping them on her dainty linen 
towels. It is not a disagreeable operation, and all 



260 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

gentlemen say they like to eat and drink from uten- 
sils which have been washed by a lady. 

Having put away the glass and china, the lady 
shakes the table-cloth, folds it, and puts it away. She 
then takes a light brush broom and sweeps the dining- 
room, and dusts it carefully, opening a window to 
air the apartment. When this is done she sets the 
parlor in order. The maid-of-all-work should, in the 
mean time, make a visit to the bedrooms, and do the 
heavy work of turning mattresses and making beds. 
When this is accomplished she must return to the 
kitchen, and after carefully cleaning the pots and 
kettles that have been in use for the morning meal, 
devote an undivided attention to her arduous duties 
as laundress. A plain dinner for washing-day — a 
beefsteak and some boiled potatoes, a salad, and a 
pie or pudding made on the preceding Saturday — is 
all that should be required of a maid-of-all-work on 
Monday. 

The afternoon must be spent in finishing the wash- 
ing, hanging out the clothes, and preparing the tea — 
an easy and informal meal, which should consist of 
something easy to cook; for, after all that she has done 
during the day, this hard-worked girl must " tidy up" 
her kitchen before she can enjoy a well-earned repose. 
It is so annoying to a maid-of-all-work to be obliged 
to open the door for visitors that ladies often have a 
little girl or boy for this purpose. In the country it 
can be more easily managed. 

Tuesday is ironing-day all over the world, and the 
maid must be assisted in this time of emergency by 
her mistress. Most ladies understand the process of 



BAKING AXD COOKING. 261 

clear starching and the best method of ironing fine 
clothing ; if they do not, they should. In fact, a 
good house -keeper should know everything; and 

when a lady gives her attention to this class of house- 
hold duties she is invariably more successful in per- 
forming them than a person of less education and in- 
telligence. 

On Wednesday the maid must bake a part of the 
bread, cake, and pies that will be required during the 
week. In this the mistress helps, making the light 
pastry, stoning the raisins, washing the currants, and 
beating the eggs. Very often a lady fond of cookery 
makes all her dainty dishes, her desserts, and her 
cakes and pies. She should help herself witli all sorts 
of mechanical appliances. She should have the best 
of egg-beaters, sugar- sifters, bowls in plenty, and 
towels and aprons ad libitum. She has, if she be a 
systematic house-keeper, a store closet, which is her 
pride, with its neat, labelled spice-boxes, and its pots 
of pickles and preserves which she has made herself, 
and which, therefore, must be nice. 

The cooking of meat is a thing which so affects the 
health of people that every lady should study it thor- 
oughly. Xo roasts should be baked. The formulary 
sounds like a contradiction ; but it is the custom in 
houses where the necessity of saving labor is an im- 
portant consideration, to put the meat that should be 

isted in the oven and bake it. This is very im- 
proper, a- it dries up all the juice, which is the life- 
giving, life-sustaining property of the meat. 

Let every young house-keeper buy a Dutch oven, 
and cither roast the meat before the coals of a food 



262 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

wood fire, or before the grating of a range, in which 
coals take the place of wood. By this method she 
saves those properties of a piece of roast beef which 
are the most valuable. Otherwise her roast meat will 
be a chip, a tasteless and a dry morsel, unpalatable 
and indigestible. 

The choking of vegetables is also to be studied; 
potatoes should not be over-boiled or underdone, as 
they are exceedingly unhealthy if not properly cooked. 
Bread must be well kneaded and delicatelv baked : a 
woman who understands the uses of fire — and every 
householder should — has stolen the secret of Prome- 
theus. 

On Thursday the maid must sweep the house thor- 
oughly, if there are heavy carpets, as this is work for 
the strong-armed and the strong-handed. The mis- 
tress can follow with the dusting-brush and the cloth, 
and, again, the maid may come in her footstep with 
step-ladder, and wipe off mirrors and windows. 

Many ladies have a different calendar from this, 
and prefer to have their work done on different days; 
but whatever may be the system for the management 
of a house, it should be strictly carried out, and all 
the help that may accrue from punctuality and order 
rendered to a maid in the discharge of her arduous 
and multifarious duties. 

Most families have a sort of general house-cleaning 
on Friday : -floors are scrubbed and brasses cleaned, 
the silver given a better cleansing, and the closets 
examined, the knives are scoured more thoroughly, 
and the lady puts her linen-closet in order, throwing 
sweet lavender between the sheets, On Saturday 



OBDEB, Tin: B1BS1 law OF HEAVEN. 2G3 

tnoit bread and cake are baked, the Sunday's dinner 
prepared, that the maid may have her Sunday after- 
noon out, and the busy week is ended with a clean 
kitchen, a well-swept and garnished house, and all the 

cooking done except the Sunday meat and vegetables. 
To conduct the business of a house through the 
week, with three meals each day, and all the work 
well done, by one maid, is a very creditable thing to 
the mistress. The "order which is Heaven's first 
law" must be her chief help in this difficult matter; 
she must be willing to do much of the light work 
herself, and she must have a young, strong, willing 
maid. 



264 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

THE HOUSE WITH TWO SERVANTS. 

The great problem of the young or middle-aged 
house-keeper in large cities is how to form a neat, 
happy, comfortable home, and so to order the house 
that two servants can accomplish all its work. 

These two servants we call the cook and the waiter, 
and they must do all that there is to do, including the 
washing. 

When life was simpler, this was done without mur- 
muring; but now it is difficult to find good and 
trained servants, particularly in New York, who will 
fill such places. For to perform the work of a family 
— to black the boots, sweep and wash the sidewalk, 
attend the door and lay the table, help with the wash- 
ing and ironing, and make the fires, as well as sweep 
and dust, and take care of the silver — would seem to 
require the hands of Briareus. 

It is better to hire a girl "for general house-work," 
and train her for her work as waitress, than to take 
one who has done nothing else but wait at table. Be 
particular, when engaging a girl, to tell her what she 
has to do, as many of the lofty kind object particu- 
larly to blacking boots ; and as it must be done, it is 
better to define it at once. 

A girl filling this position should have, first, the ad- 



DUTIES IN GENERAL HOUSE-WORK. 265 

vantage of system, and the family must keep regular 
hours. She must rise at six, or earlier, if necessary, 
open the front-door and parlor-blinds, and the dining- 
room windows, and then proceed to cleanse the front 
steps and sidewalk, polish the bell-pull, and make all 
tidy about the mats. She must next make the fires, 
if fires are used in the house, and carry down the 
ashes, carefully depositing them where they will not 
communicate fire. She must then gather the boots 
and shoes from the doors of the sleeping-rooms, and 
take them to the laundry, where she should brush 
them, having a closet there for her brushes and black- 
ing. Having replaced the boots beside the respective 
doors to which they belong, she should make herself 
neat and clean, put on her cap and apron, and then 
prepare for laying the table for breakfast. This she 
does not do until she has brushed up the floor, caused 
the fire to burn brightly, and in all respects made the 
dining-room respectable. 

The laying of the table must be a careful and neat 
operation; a clean cloth should be put on, with the fold 
regularly running down the middle of the table, the 
silver and glass and china placed neatly and in or- 
der, the urn-lamp lighted, and the water put to boil, 
the napkins fresh and well -folded, and the chairs 
drawn up in order on either side. It is well worth 
a mistress's while to preside at this work for two 
or three mornings, to see that her maid understands 
her wishes. 

All being in order, the maid may ring a bell, or 
knock at the doors, or rouse the family as they may 
wish. 



266 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

When breakfast is over she removes the dishes, and 
washes the silver and china in the pantry. After 
putting everything away, and opening a window in 
the dining-room, she proceeds to the bedrooms. 

Every one should, before leaving his bedroom, open 
a window and turn back the clothes, to air the room 
and the bed thoroughly. If this has been neglected, 
it is the servant's business to do it, and to make the 
beds, wash the basins, and leave everything very 
clean. She must also dust the bureaus and tables 
and chairs, hang up the dresses, put away the shoes, 
and set everything in order. 

She then descends to the parlor floor, and makes 
it neat, and thence to the kitchen, where, if she has 
time, she does a little washing ; but if there is to be 
luncheon or early dinner, she cannot do much until 
that is prepared, particularly if it is her duty to an- 
swer a bell. In a doctor's house, or in a house where 
there are many calls, some one to attend exclusively 
at the door is almost indispensable. 

After the early dinner or lunch, the maid has a few 
hours' washing and ironing before getting ready for 
the late dinner or tea, which is the important meal 
of the day. If she is systematic, and the family are 
punctual, a girl can do a great deal of washing and 
ironing on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, even 
if she has to answer the bell ; but if she is not sys- 
tematic, and the meals are not at regular hours, she 
cannot do much. 

On Thursday, which we have already designated as 
sweeping day, she must sweep the whole house, all the 
carpets, shake the rugs in the back yard, shake and 



THE DUTIES OF A COOK. 267 

sweep down the heavy curtains, and dust the mirror- 
frames with a long feather-duster. The mistress can 
help her by insisting that her family shall leave their 
rooms early, and by herself refusing to see visitors on 
sweeping day. 

On Friday, in addition to the usual daily work, the 
silver must be polished, the brass rubbed, and the 
closets (which, in the hurry of the week's work, may 
have been neglected), carefully cleaned and ventilated. 
On Friday afternoon the napkins and towels should 
be washed. 

On Saturday these should be ironed, and every- 
thing, so far as possible, made ready for Sunday. 

The cook, meantime, should rise even earlier than 
the waiter; should descend in time to receive the 
milkman, the iceman, and the breadman ; should un- 
lock the basement-door, sweep out the hall, and take 
in the barrels which have been left out with the ashes 
and other refuse. 

A cook should be instructed never to give away the 
beef-dripping, as, if clarified in cold water, it is excel- 
lent for frying oysters, etc., and saves butter. The 
cook should air the kitchen and laundry, build the fire 
in the range, and sweep carefully before she begins 
to cook. 

A careful house-keeper takes care that her cook shall 
make her toilet in her room, not in the kitchen. Par- 
ticularly should she be made to arrange her hair up- 
stairs, as some cooks have an exceedingly nasty habit 
of combing their hair in the kitchen. It will repay 
a house-keeper to make several visits to the kitchen 
at unexpected hours. 



268 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Cooks vary so decidedly in their way of preparing 
meals that no general directions can be given; but 
the best should be made to follow certain rules, and 
the worst should be watched and guarded. A great 
cleanliness as to pots and kettles, particularly the tea- 
kettle, should be insisted upon, and the closets, pails, 
barrels, etc., be carefully watched. Many a case of 
typhoid fever can be traced to the cook's slop-pail, or 
closets, or sink, and no lady should be careless of look- 
ing into all these places. 

A cook, properly trained, can get up a good break- 
fast out of remains of the dinner of the preceding day, 
or some picked-up cod-fish, toast, potatoes sliced and 
fried, or mashed, boiled, stewed, or baked. The mak- 
ing of good clear coffee is not often understood by 
the green Irish cook. The mistress must teach her 
this useful art, and also how to make good tea, al- 
though the latter is generally made on the table. 

With the sending up of the breakfast comes the 
first chance of a collision between cook and waiter ; 
and disagreeable, bad-tempered servants make much 
of this opportunity. The cook in city houses puts 
the dinner on the dumb-waiter and sends it up to the 
waiter, who takes it off. All the heavy meat-dishes ■ 
and the greasy plates are sent down to the cook to 
wash, and herein lies many a grievance which the mis- 
tress can anticipate and prevent by forbidding the use 
of the dumb-waiter if it leads to quarrelling, and by 
making the maids carry all the plates and dishes up 
and down. This course of treatment will soon cure 
them of their little tempers. 

In plain households the cook has much less to do 



SMALL INCOMES VS. HOUSE-KEEPING. 269 

thau the waiter ; she should therefore undertake the 
greater part of the washing and ironing. Many very 
good cooks will do all the washing and ironing except 
the table linen and the towels used by the waiter; and 
if this arrangement is made at first, no trouble ensues. 
The great trouble in most households comes from the 
fact that the work is not definitely divided, and that 
one servant declares that the other is imposing upon 
her. 

If a mistress is fair, honorable, strict, and attentive, 
she can thus carry on a large household (if there are 
no young children) with two energetic servants. She 
cannot, of course, have elegant house-keejDing ; it is a 
very arduous undertaking to conduct a city house 
with the assistance of only two people. Many young 
house-keepers become discouraged, and many old ones 
do so as well, and send the washing and ironing to a 
public laundry. But as small incomes are the rule, 
and as most people must economize, it has been done, 
and it can be done. The mistress will find it to her 
advantage to have a very great profusion of towels 
and dusters, and also to supply the kitchen with every 
requisite utensil for cooking a good dinner, or for the 
execution of the ordinary daily work — such tools as 
an ice-hammer, a can-opener, plenty of corkscrews, 
a knife-sharpener and several large, strong knives, a 
meat-chopper and bread-baskets, stone pots and jars. 
The modern refrigerator has simplified kitchen- work 
very much, and no one who has lived long enough to 
remember when it was not used can fail to bless its 
airy and cool closets and its orderly arrangemeii 

The "privileges" of these bard- worked servants 



270 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

should be respected. " An evening a week, and every 
other Sunday afternoon," is a formula not to be for- 
gotten. Consider what it is to them ! Perhaps a 
visit to a sick sister or mother, a recreation much 
needed, a simple pleasure, but one which is to them 
what a refreshing book, a visit to the opera, or a drive 
in the park, is to their employers. Only a very cruel 
mistress will ever fail to keep her promise to a faith- 
ful servant on these too infrequent holidays. 

The early Sunday dinner is an inconvenience, but 
it is due to the girls who count on their "Sunday 
out" to have it always punctually given to them. 

Many devout Catholics make their church -go- 
ing somewhat inconvenient, but they should not be 
thwarted in it. It is to them something more than it 
is to Protestants, and a devout Catholic is to be re- 
spected and believed in. No doubt there are very 
bad-tempered and disagreeable girls who make a pre- 
tence of religion, but the mistress should be slow to 
condemn, lest she wrong one who is sincerely pious. 

In sickness, Irish girls are generally kind and ac- 
commodating, being themselves unselfish, and are apt 
to show a better spirit in a time of trouble than the 
Swedes, the Germans, or the Scotch, although the lat- 
ter are« possessed of more intelligence, and are more 
readily trained to habits of order and system. The 
warm heart and the confused brain, the want of truth, 
of the average Irish servant will perplex and annoy 
while it touches the sympathies of a woman of gen- 
erous spirit. 

The women who would make the best house-ser- 
vants are New England girls who have been brought 



HOUSE-WOPwK NOT DEGRADING. 271 

up in poor but comfortable homes. But they will 
not be servants. They have imbibed the foolish idea 
that the position of a girl who does house -work is 
inferior in gentility to that of one who works in a 
factory, or a printing-office, or a milliner's shop. It 
is a great mistake, and one which fills the country 
with incapable wives for the working-man: for a 
woman who cannot make bread or cook a decent din- 
ner is a fraud if she marry a poor man who expects 
her to do it. 

That would be a good and a great woman who 
would preach a crusade against this false doctrine — 
who would say to the young women of her neighbor- 
hood, " I will give a marriage portion to any of you 
who will go into domestic service, become good cooks 
and waiters, and will bring me your certificates of effi- 
ciency at the end of five years."' 

And if those who employ could have these clear 
brains and thrifty hands, how much more would they 
be willing to give in dollars and cents a month ! 



272 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE HOUSE WITH MANY SERVANTS. 

A lady who assumes the control of an elegant house 
without previous training had better, for a year at 
least, employ an English house-keeper, who will teach 
her the system necessary to make so many servants 
work properly together; for, unless she knows how 
to manage them, each servant will be a trouble in- 
stead of a help, and there will be no end to that ex- 
asperating complaint, " That is not my work." 

The English house-keeper is given full power by 
her mistress to hire and discharge servants, to ar- 
range their meals, their hours, and their duties, so as 
to make the domestic wheels run smoothly, and to 
achieve that perfection of service which all who have 
stayed in an English house can appreciate. She is a 
personage of much importance in the house. She gen- 
erally dresses in moire antique, and is lofty in her man- 
ners. She alone, except the maid, approaches the mis- 
tress, and receives such general orders as that lady 
may choose to give. The house-keeper has her own 
room, where she takes her meals alone, or invites those 
whom she wishes to eat with her. Thus we see in 
English novels that the children sometimes take tea 
" in the house-keeper's room." It is generally a com- 
fortable and snug place. 



THE HOUSE-KEEPER. 273 

But in this country very few such house-keepers 
can be found. The best that can be done is to secure 
the services of an efficient person content to be a ser- 
vant herself, who will be a care-taker, and will train 
the butler, the footmen, and the maid-servants in their 
respective duties. 

Twelve servants are not infrequently employed in 
large houses in this country, and in New York and 
at Newport often a larger number. These, with the 
staff of assistants required to cook and wash for them, 
form a large force for a lady to control. 

The house-keeper should hire the cook and scullery- 
maid, and be responsible for them ; she orders the 
dinner (if the lady chooses); she gives out the stores; 
the house linen is under her charge, and she must at- 
tend to mending and replenishing it ; she must watch 
over the china and silver, and every day visit all the 
bedrooms to see that the chamber-maids have done 
their duty, and that writing-paper and ink and pens 
are laid on the tables of invited guests, and that can- 
dles, matches, and soap and towels are in their re- 
spective places. 

A house-keeper should be able to make fine desserts, 
and to attend to all the sewing of the family, with 
the assistance of a maid — that is, the mending, and 
the hemming of the towels, etc. She should be firm 
and methodical, with a natural habit of command, and 
impartial in her dealings, but strict and exacting; 
she should compel each servant to do his duty, as she 
represents the mistress, and should be invested with 
her authority. 

It is she who must receive the dessert when it 

18 



274 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

comes from the dining-room, watch the half-emptied 
bottles of wine, which men-servants nearly always 
appropriate for their own use, and be, in all respects, 
a watch-dog for her master, as in large families ser- 
vants are prone to steal all that may fall in their 
way. 

Unfortunately a bad house-keeper is worse than 
none, and can steal to her heart's content. Such a 
one, hired by a careless, pleasure-loving lady in New 
York, stole in a twelvemonth enough to live on for 
several years. 

The house-keeper and the butler are seldom friends, 
and consequently many people consider it wise to hire 
a married couple competent to perform the duties of 
these two positions. If the two are honest, this is an 
excellent arrangement. 

The butler is answerable for the property put in 
his charge, and for the proper performance of the du- 
ties of the footmen under his control. He must be 
the judge of what men can and should do. He is 
given the care of the wine, although every gentleman 
should keep the keys, only giving just so much to the 
butler as he intends shall be used each day. The plate 
is given to the butler, and he is made responsible for 
any articles missing; he also sees to the pantry, but 
has a maid or a footman to wash the dishes and 
cleanse the silver. All the arrangements for dinner 
devolve upon him, and when it is served he stands be- 
hind his mistress's chair. He looks after the foot- 
man who answers the bell, and takes care that he 
shall be properly dressed and at his post. 

In houses where there are two or three footmen the 



THE LADY's-MAIX>. 21 5 

butler serves breakfast, luncheon, tea, and dinner, as- 
sisted by such of his acolytes as he may choose. He 
should also wait upon his master, if required, see that 
the library and smoking-room are aired and in order, 
the newspaper brought in, the magazines cut, and the 
paper-knife in its place. Many gentlemen in this 
country send their butlers to market, and leave en- 
tirely to them the arrangement of the table. 

If there is but one footman in a large house, the 
butler has a great deal to do, particularly if the family 
be a hospitable one. When the footman is out with 
the carriage the butler answers the front-door bell, 
but in very elegant houses there are generally two 
footmen, as this is not strictly the duty of a butler. 

A lady's-maid is indispensable to ladies who visit 
much, but this class of servant is the most difficult 
to manage. Ladies'-maids must be told, when hired, 
that they can have no such position in America as 
they have in England: that they must make their own 
beds, wash their own clothing, and eat with the other 
servants. They must be first-rate hair-dressers, good 
packers of trunks, and understand dress-making and 
fine starching, and be amiable, willing, and pleasant. 
A woman who combines these qualifications commands 
very high wages, and expects, as her perquisite, her 
mistress's cast-off dresses. 

French maids are in great demand, as they have a 
natural taste in all things pertaining to dress and the 
toilet, but they are apt to be untruthful and treacher- 
ous. If a lady can get a peasant girl from some rural 
district, she will find her a most useful and vain 
maid after she has been taught. 



21 Q MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Many ladies educate some clever girl who has been 
maid for the position of house-keeper, and such a per- 
son, who can be trusted to hire an assistant, becomes 
invaluable. She often accomplishes all the dress-mak- 
ing and sewing for the household, and her salary of 
thirty dollars a month is well earned. 

As the duties of a lady's-maid, where there are 
young ladies, include attending them in the streets and 
to parties, she should be a person of unquestioned re- 
spectability. The maid should bring up the hot water 
for her ladies, and an early cup of tea, prepare their 
bath, assist at their toilet, put their clothes away, be 
ready to aid in every change of dress, put out their va- 
rious dresses for riding, dining, walking, and for after- 
noon tea, dress their hair for dinner, and be ready to find 
for them their gloves, shoes, and other belongings. 

A maid can be, and generally is, the most disagreea- 
ble of creatures; but some ladies have the tact to make 
good servants out of most unpromising materials. 

The maid, if she does not accompany her mistress 
to a party and wait for her in the dressing-room, 
should await her arrival at home, assist her to undress, 
comb and brush her hair, and get ready the bath. She 
should also have a cup of hot tea or chocolate in readi- 
ness for her. She must keep her clothes in order, 
sew new rufHes in her dresses, and do all the millinery 
and dress-making required of her. 

Very often the maid is required to attend to the 
brie - a - brae and pretty ornaments of the mantel, to 
keep fresh flowers in the drawing-room or bedroom, 
and, above all, to wash the pet dog. As almost all 
women are fond of dogs, this is not a disagreeable 



THE NURSERY GOVERNESS. J 7 7 

duty to a French maid, and she gives Fifine his bath 
without grumbling. But if she be expected to speak 
French to the children, she sometimes rebels, particu- 
larly if she and the nurse should not be good friends. 

A lad j', in hiring a maid, should specify the extra 
duties she will be required to perform, and thus give 
her the option of refusing the situation. If she ac- 
cepts it, she must be made strictly to account for any 
neglect or omission of her work. A maid with an 
indulgent mistress is free in the evenings, after eis;ht 
o'clock, and every Sunday afternoon. 

In families where there are many children, two 
nurses are frequently required — a head nurse and an 
assistant. 

The nursery governess is much oftener employed 
now in this country than in former years. This posi- 
tion is often filled by well-mannered and well-educated 
young women, who are the daughters of poor men, and 
obliged to earn their own living. These young women, 
if they are good and amiable, are invaluable to their 
mistresses. They perform the duties of a nurse, wash 
and dress the children, eat with them and teach them, 
the nursery -maid doing the coarse, rough work of 
the nursery. If a good nursery governess can be 
found, she is worth her weight in gold to her em- 
ployer. She should not eat with the servants; there 
should be a separate table for her and her charges. 
This meal is prepared by the kitchen-maid, who is a 
very important functionary, almost an under-cook, as 
the chief cook in such an establishment as we are de- 
scribing is absorbed in the composition of the grand 
dishes and dinners. 



278 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

The kitchen-maid should be a good, plain cook, 
and clever in making the dishes suitable for chil- 
dren. Much of the elementary cooking for the din- 
ing-room, such as the foundation for sauces and soups, 
and the roasted and boiled joints, is required of her, 
and she also cooks the servants' dinner, which should 
be an entirely different meal from that served in the 
dining-room. Nine meals a day are usually cooked 
in a family living in this manner — breakfast for ser- 
vants, children, and the master and mistress, three ; 
children's dinner, servants' dinner, and luncheon, an- 
other three ; and the grand dinner at seven, the chil- 
dren's tea, and the servants' supper, the remaining 
three. 

Where two footmen are in attendance, the head 
footman attends the door, waits on his mistress w T hen 
she drives out, carries notes, assists the butler, lays 
the table and clears it, and washes glass, china, and 
silver. The under-footman rises at six, makes fires, 
cleans boots, trims and cleans the lamps, opens the 
shutters and the front-door, sweeps down the steps, 
and, indeed, does the rougher part of the work be- 
fore the other servants begin their daily duties. 
Each should be without mustache, clean shaven, and 
clad in neat livery. His linen and white neck -tie 
should be, when he appears to wait on the family at 
table or in any capacity, immaculate. 

The servants' meals should be punctual and plente- 
ous, although not luxurious. It is a bad plan to feed 
servants on the luxuries of the master's table, but a 
good cook will be able to compound dishes for the 
kitchen that will be savory and palatable. 



THE SHY AND AWKWARD. 279 



CHAPTER XXXIII. • 

MANNERS. — A STUDY POR THE AWKWARD AND 
THE SHY. 

It is a comfort to those of us who have felt the 
cold perspiration start on the brow, at the prospect of 
entering an unaccustomed sphere, to remember that 
the best men and women whom the world has known 
have been, in their day, afflicted with shyness. In- 
deed, it is to the past that we must refer when the 
terrible disease seizes us, when the tongue becomes 
dry in the mouth, the hands tremble, and the knees 
knock together. 

Who does not pity the trembling boy when, on the 
evening of his first party, he succumbs to this dread- 
ful malady ? The color comes in spots on his face, 
and his hands are cold and clammy. He sits down 
on the stairs and wishes he were dead. A strange 
sensation is running down his back. " Come, Peter, 
cheer up," his mother says, not daring to tell him how 
she sympathizes with him. He is afraid to be afraid, 
he is ashamed to be ashamed. Nothing can equal 
this moment of agony. The whole room looks black 
before him as some chipper little girl, who knows not 
the meaning of the word " embarrassment," comes to 
greet him. He crawls off to the friendly shelter of 
a group of boys, and sees the "craven of the play- 



280 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

ground, the dunce of the school," with a wonderful 
self-possession, lead off in the german with the pret- 
tiest girl. As he grows older, and becomes the young 
man whose duty it is to go to dinners and afternoon 
parties, this terrible weakness will again overcome 
him. He has done well at college, can make a very 
good speech at the club suppers, but at the door of 
a parlor he feels himself a drivelling idiot. He 
assumes a courage, if he has it not, and dashes into 
a room (which is full of people) as he would attack 
a forlorn hope. There is safety in numbers, and he 
retires to a corner. 

When he goes to a tea-party a battery of feminine 
eyes gazes at him with a critical perception of his 
youth and rawness. Knowing that he ought to be 
supremely graceful and serene, he stumbles over a 
footstool, and hears a suppressed giggle. He reach- 
es his hostess, and wishes she were the "cannon's 
mouth," in order that his sufferings might be end- 
ed ; but she is not. His agony is to last the whole 
evening. Tea-parties are eternal: they never end; 
they are like the old-fashioned ideas of a future 
state of torment — they grow hotter and more sti- 
fling. As the evening advances towards eternity 
he upsets the cream-jug. He summons all his will- 
power, or he would run away. No ; retreat is im- 
possible. One must die at the post of duty. He 
thinks of all the formulas of courage — "None but the 
brave deserve the fair," " He either fears his fate too 
much, or bis deserts are small," "There is no such 
coward as self-consciousness," etc. But these max- 
ims are of no avail. His feet are feet of clay, not 



BASHFULNESS AMONG MEN". 281 

good to stand on, only good to stumble with. His 
hands are cold, tremulous, and useless. There is a 
very disagreeable feeling in the back of his neck, 
and a spinning sensation about the brain. A queer 
rumbling seizes his ears. He has heard that " con- 
science makes cowards of us all." What mortal 
sin has he committed? His moral sense answers 
back, "None. You are only that poor creature, a 
bashful youth." And he bravely calls on all his 
nerves, muscles, and brains to help him through this 
ordeal. He sees the pitying eyes of the woman to 
whom he is talking turn away from his countenance 
(on which he knows that all his miserable shyness 
has written itself in legible characters). "And this 
humiliation, too?" he asks of himself, as she brings 
him the usual refuge of the awkward — a portfolio of 
photographs to look at. Women are seldom troubled, 
at the age at which men suffer, with bashfulness or 
awkwardness. It is as if Nature thus compensated 
the weaker vessel. Cruel are those women, however, 
and most to be reprobated, who laugh at a bashful 
man! 

The sufferings of a shy man would fill a volume. It 
is a nervous seizure for which no part of his organiza- 
tion is to blame ; he cannot reason it away, he can 
only crush it by enduring it : " To bear is to conquer 
our Fate." Some men, finding the play not worth 
the candle, give up society and the world; others go 
on, suffer, and come out cool veterans who fear no 
tea-party, however overwhelming it may be. 

It is the proper province of parents to have their 
children taught all the accomplishments of the body. 



282 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

that they, like the ancient Greeks, may know that 
every muscle will obey the brain. A shy, awkward 
boy should be trained in dancing, fencing, boxing ; he 
should be instructed in music, elocution, and public 
speaking ; he should be sent into society, whatever it 
may cost him at first, as certainly as he should be sent 
to the dentist's. His present sufferings may save him 
from lifelong annoyance. 

To the very best men — the most learned, the most 
graceful, the most eloquent, the most successful — has 
come at some one time or other the dreadful agony 
of bashfulness. Indeed, it is the higher order of hu- 
man being that it most surely attacks ; it is the pre- 
cursor of many excellences, and, like the knight's 
vigil, if patiently and bravely borne, the knight is 
twice the hero. It is this recollection, which can 
alone assuage the sufferer, that he should always 
carry with him. He should remember that the com- 
pound which he calls himself is of all things most 
mixed. 

"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good 
and ill together." Two antagonistic races — it may 
be his Grandfather Brown and his Grandmother 
Williams — are struggling in him for the mastery; 
and their exceedingly opposite natures are pulling his 
arms and legs asunder. He has to harmonize this 
antagonism before he becomes himself, and it adds 
much to his confusion to see that poor little pre- 
tender, Tom Titmouse, talking and laughing and mak- 
ing merry. There are, however, no ancestral diver- 
sities fighting for the possession of Tom Titmouse. 
The grandfathers and grandmothers of Tom Titmouse 



VAGARIES OF THE SHY. 283 

were not people of strong character ; they were a dec- 
orous race on both sides, with no heavy intellectual 
burdens, good enough people who wore well. But 
does our bashful man know this ? No. He simply 
remembers a passage in the "Odyssey" which Tom 
Titmouse could not construe, but which the bashful 
man read, to the delight of the tutor : 

" O gods ! How beloved he is, and how honored 
by all men to whatsoever land or city he comes ! He 
brings much booty from Troy, but we, having accom- 
plished the same journey, are returning home having 
empty hands ! 5 ' And this messenger from Troy is 
Tom Titmouse ! 

Not that all poor scholars and inferior men have 
fine manners, nor do all good scholars and superior 
men fail in the drawing-room. No rule is without 
an exception. It is, however, a comfort to those who 
are awkward and shy to remember that many of the 
great and good and superior men who live in history 
have suffered, even as they suffer, from the pin-pricks 
of bashfulness. The first refuge of the inexperienced, 
bashful person is often to assume a manner of ex- 
treme hauteur. This is, perhaps, a natural fence — or 
defence ; it is, indeed, a very convenient armor, and 
many a woman has fought her battle behind it 
through life. No doubt it is the armor of the many 
so-called frigid persons, male and female, who must 
either suffer the pangs of bashfulness, or affect a cold- 
ness which they do not feel. Some people are natu- 
rally encased in a column of ice which they cannot 
break, but within is a fountain which would burst 
out at the lips in words of kindliness if only the 



284 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

tongue could speak them. These limitations of nat- 
ure are very strange ; we cannot explain them. It 
is only by referring to Grandfather Brown and 
Grandmother Williams again that we understand 
them at all. One person will be furnished with very 
large feet and very small hands, with a head dispro- 
portionately large for the body, or one as remarkably 
small. Differences of race must account for these 
eccentricities of nature ; we cannot otherwise explain 
them, nor the mental antagonisms. 

But the awkward and the shy do not always take 
refuge in a cold manner. Sometimes they study 
manner as they would the small-sword exercise, and 
exploit it with equal fervor. Exaggeration of man- 
ner is quite as common a refuge for these unfortu- 
nates as the other extreme of calmness. They ren- 
der themselves ridiculous by the lowness of their 
bows and the vivid picture squ en ess of their speech. 
They, as it were, burst the bounds of the calyx, and 
the flower opens too wide. Symmetry is lost, grace- 
ful outline is destroyed. Many a bashful man, think- 
ing of Tom Titmouse, has become an acrobat in his 
determination to be lively and easy. He should re- 
member the juste milieu, recommended by Shakspeare 
when he says, 

" They are as sick that surfeit with too much, 
As they that starve with nothing." 

The happy people who are born unconscious of their 
bodies, who grow through life more and more grace- 
ful, easy, cordial, and agreeable ; the happy few who 
were never bashful, never nervous, never had clammy 



THE ENGLISH COUNTRY-HOUSE. 285 

hands, they need not read these pages — they are not 
written for such blessed eyes. It is for the well- 
meaning, but shy and awkward, people that the man- 
ners of artificial society are most useful. 

For the benefit of such persons we must "improve 
a ceremonial nicety into a substantial duty," else we 
shall see a cultivated scholar confused before a set of 
giggling girls, and a man who is all wisdom, valor, 
and learning, playing the donkey at an evening party. 
If he lack the inferior arts of polite behavior, who 
will take the trouble to discover a Sir Walter Raleigh 
behind his cravat ? 

A man who is constrained, uneasy, and ungraceful, 
can spoil the happiness of a dozen people. Therefore 
he is bound to create an artificial manner, if a natural 
one does not come to him, remembering always that 
"manners are shadows of virtues." 

The manners of artificial society have this to com- 
mend them : they meditate the greatest good to the 
greatest number. We do not like the word "arti- 
ficial," or to commend anything which is supposed 
to be the antipodes of the word "sincere," but it is a 
recipe, a doctor's prescription that we are recommend- 
ing as a cure for a disease. " Good manners are to 
special societies what good morals are to society in 
general — their cement and their security. True po- 
liteness creates perfect ease and freedom ; it and its 
essence is to treat others as you would have oth 
treat you." Therefore, as you know how embarras 
ing embarrassment is to everybody else, strive not to 
be embarrassed. 



286 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

HOW TO TEEAT A GUEST. 

No one possessed of his senses would invite a per- 
son to his country house for the purpose of making 
him unhappy. At least so we should say at first 
thought. But it is an obvious fact that very many 
guests are invited to the country houses of their 
friends, and are made extremely miserable while there. 
They have to rise at unusual hours, eat when they 
are not hungry, drive or walk or play tennis when 
they would prefer to do everything else, and they are 
obliged to give up those hours which are precious to 
them for other duties or pleasures ; so that many peo- 
ple, after an experience of visiting, are apt to say, 
"No more of the slavery of visiting for me, if you 
please !" 

Now the English in their vast country houses have 
reduced the custom of visiting and receiving their 
friends to a system. They are said to be in all re- 
spects the best hosts in the world, the masters of the 
letting-alone system. A man who owns a splendid 
place near London invites a guest for three days or 
more, and carefully suggests when he shall come and 
when he shall go— a very great point in hospitality. 
He is invited to come by the three o'clock train on 
Monday, and to leave by the four o'clock train on 



THE INVITED GUEST. 287 

Thursday. That means that he shall arrive before 
dinner on Monday, and leave after luncheon on Thurs- 
day. If a guest cannot accede to these hours, he must 
write and say so. Once arrived, he rarely meets his 
host or hostess until dinner-time. He is conducted to 
his room, a cup of tea with some light refreshment 
is provided, and the well-bred servant in attendance 
says at what hour before dinner he will be received 
in the drawing-room. It is possible that some member 
of the family may be disengaged and may propose 
a drive before dinner, but this is not often done; the 
guest is left to himself or herself until dinner. Gen- 
eral and Mrs. Grant were shown to their rooms at 
Windsor Castle, and locked up there, when they visit- 
ed the Queen, until the steward came to tell them 
that dinner would be served in half an hour; they 
were then conducted to the grand salon, where the 
Queen presently entered. In less stately residences 
very much the same ceremony is observed. The host- 
ess, after dinner and before the separation for the 
night, tells her guests that horses will be at their dis- 
posal the next morning, and also asks if they would 
like to play lawn-tennis, if they wish to explore the 
park, at what hour they will breakfast, or if they 
will breakfast in their rooms. " Luncheon is at one, 
and she will be happy to see them at that informal 
meal." 

Thus the guest has before him the enviable privi- 
lege of spending the day as he pleases. He need 
not talk unless he choose; he may take a book and 
wander off under the trees; he may take a horse and 
explore the county, or he may drive in a victoria, 



288 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

phaeton, or any other sort of carriage. To a lady 
who has her letters to write, her novel to read, or her 
early headache to manage, this liberty is precious. 

It must also be said that no one is allowed to feel 
neglected in an English house. If a lady guest says, 
" I am a stranger ; I should like to see your fine 
house and your lovely park," some one is found to 
accompany her. Seldom the hostess, for she has 
much else to do ; but there is often a single sister, 
a cousin, or a very intelligent governess, who is sum- 
moned. In our country we cannot offer our guests 
all these advantages ; we can, hoAvever, offer them 
their freedom, and give them, with our limited hos- 
pitality, their choice of hours for breakfast and their 
freedom from our society. 

But the questioner may ask, Why invite guests, 
unless we wish to see them? We do w T ish to see 
them — a part of the day, not the whole day. No 
one can sit and talk all day. The hostess should 
have her privilege of retiring after the mid-day meal, 
with her novel, for a nap, and so should the guest. 
Well-bred people understand all this, and are glad to 
give up the pleasure of social intercourse for an hour 
of solitude. There is nothing so sure to repay one 
in the long run as these quiet hours. 

If a lady invites another to visit her at Newport 
or Saratoga, she should evince her thought for her 
guest's comfort by providing her with horses and 
carriage to pay her own visits, to take her own drives, 
or to do her shopping. Of course, the pleasure of 
two friends is generally to be together, and to do the 
same things ; but sometimes it is quite the reverse. 



THE AMERICAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. 289 

The tastes and habits of two people staying in the 
same house may be very different, and each should 
respect the peculiarities of the other. It costs little 
time and no money for an opulent Newport hostess 
to find out what her guest wishes to do with her day, 
and she can easily, with a little tact, allow her to be 
happy in her own way. 

Gentlemen understand this much better than ladies, 
and a gentleman guest is allowed to do very much as 
he pleases at Newport. No one asks anything about 
his plans for the day, except if he will dine at home. 
His hostess may ask him to drive or ride with her, 
or to go to the Casino, perhaps ; but if she be a well- 
bred woman of the world she will not be angry if he 
refuses. A lady guest has not, however, such free- 
dom ; she is apt to be a slave, from the fact that as 
yet the American hostess has not learned that the 
truest hospitality is to let her guest alone, and to al- 
low her to enjoy herself in her own way. A thor- 
oughly well-bred guest makes no trouble in a house ; 
she has the instinct of a lady, and is careful that no 
plan of her hostess shall be disarranged by her pres- 
ence. She mentions all her separate invitations, de- 
sires to know when her hostess wishes her presence, 
if the carriage can take her hither and yon, or if 
she may be allowed to hire a carriage. 

There are hostesses, here and in England, who do 
not invite guests to their houses for the purpose of 
making them happy, but to add to their own impor- 
tance. Such hostesses are not apt to consider the in- 
dividual rights of any one, and they use a guest mere- 
ly to add to the brilliancy of their parties, and to make 

10 



290 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

the house more fashionable and attractive. Some ill- 
bred women, in order to show their power, even in- 
sult and illtreat the people who have accepted their 
proffered hospitality. This class of hostess is, fortu- 
nately, not common, but it is not unknown. 

A hostess should remember that, when she asks peo- 
ple to visit her, she has two very important duties 
to perform — one, not to neglect her guests ; the other, 
not to weary them by too much attention. Never 
give a guest the impression that he is "being enter- 
tained, 5 ' that he is on your mind ; follow the daily 
life of your household and of your duties as you 
desire, taking care that your guest is never in an un- 
pleasant position or neglected. If you have a tire- 
some guest who insists upon following you around 
and weighing heavily on your hands, be firm, go to 
your own room, and lock the door. If you have a 
sulky guest who looks bored, throw open the libra- 
ry-door, order the carriage, and make your own es- 
cape. But if you have a very agreeable guest who 
shows every desire to please and be pleased, give that 
model guest the privilege of choosing her own hours 
and her own retirement. 

The charm of an American country-house is, gen- 
erally, that it is a home, and sacred to home duties. 
A model guest never infringes for one moment on 
the rights of the master of the house. She never 
spoils his dinner or his drive by being late ; she never 
sends him back to bring her parasol ; she never 
abuses his friends or the family dog ; she is careful 
to abstain from disagreeable topics ; she joins his 
whist-table if she knows how to play; but she ought 



PKIVILEGES OF A GUEST. 291 

never to be obliged to rise an hour earlier than her 
wont because he wishes to take an early train for 
town. These early -morning, perfunctory breakfasts 
are not times for conversation, and they ruin the day 
for many bad sleepers. 

In a country neighborhood a hostess has sometimes 
to ask her guests to go to church to hear a stupid 
preacher, and to go to her country neighbors, to be- 
come acquainted with what may be the slavery of 
country parties. The guest should always be allowed 
to refuse these hospitalities ; and, if he be a tired 
townsman, he will prefer the garden, the woodland, 
the retirement of the country, to any church or tea- 
party in the world. He cannot enter into his host's 
interests or his neighbor's. Leave him to his sol- 
itude if in that is his happiness. 

At Newport guest and hostess have often different 
friends and different invitations. When this is under- 
stood, no trouble ensues if the host and hostess go out 
to dinner and leave the guest at home. It often hap- 
pens that this is done, and no lady of good-breeding 
takes offence. Of course a nice dinner is prepared for 
her, and she is often asked to invite a friend to share it. 

On the other hand, the guest often has invitations 
which do not include the hostess. These should be 
spoken of in good season, so that none of the hostess's 
plans may be disarranged, that the carriage may be 
ordered in time, and the guest sent for at the proper 
hour. Well-bred people always accept these contin- 
gencies as a matter of course, and are never discon- 
certed by them. 

There is no office in the world which should be 



292 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

filled with such punctilious devotion, propriety, and 
self-respect as that of hostess. If a lady ever allows 
her guest to feel that she is a cause of inconvenience, 
she violates the first rule of hospitality. If she fail 
in any way in her obligations as hostess to a guest 
whom she has invited, she shows herself to be ill- 
bred and ignorant of the first principles of politeness. 
She might better invite twelve people to dinner and 
then ask them to dine on the pavement than ignore 
or withdraw from a written and accepted invitation, 
unless sickness or death afford the excuse ; and yet 
hostesses have been known to do this from mere ca- 
price. But they were necessarily ill-bred people. 



ETIQUETTE OF RAISING THE HAT. 293 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

CERTAIN" QUESTIONS ANSWERED. 

We are asked by a correspondent as to when a gen- 
tleman should wear his hat and when take it off. A 
gentleman wears his hat in the street, on a steamboat 
deck, raising it to a lady acquaintance; also in a prom- 
enade concert -room and picture-gallery. He never 
wears it in a theatre or opera-house, and seldom in 
the parlors of a hotel. The etiquette of raising the 
hat on the staircases and in the halls of a hotel as 
gentlemen pass ladies is much commended. In Eu- 
rope each man raises his hat as he passes a bier, or if 
a hearse carrying a dead body passes him. In this 
country men simply raise their hats as a funeral cor- 
tege passes into a church, or at the grave. If a gen- 
tleman, particularly an elderly one, takes off his hat 
and stands uncovered in a draughty place, as the 
foyer of an opera-house, while talking to ladies, it is 
proper for one of them to say, "Pray resume your 
hat" — a delicate attention deeply prized by a respect- 
ful man, who, perhaps, would not otherwise cover his 
head. 

Again, our young lady friends ask us many questions 
on the subject of propriety, showing how anxious they 
are to do right, but also proving how far they are 
from apprehending what in Old-World customs lias 



294- MANNERS AJS T I> SOCIAL USAGES. 

been always considered propriety. In our new coun- 
try the relations of men and women are necessarily 
simple. The whole business of etiquette is, of course, 
reduced to each one's sense of propriety, and the stand- 
ard must be changed as the circumstances demand. 
As, for instance, a lady writes to know if she should 
thank a gentleman for paying for her on an excur- 
sion. Now this involves a long answer. In Europe 
no young lady could accept an invitation to go as the 
guest of a young gentleman on "an excursion," and 
allow him to pay for her, without losing much reputa- 
tion. She would not in either England or France be 
received in society again. She should be invited by 
the gentleman through her father or mother, and one 
or both should accompany her. Even then it is not 
customary for gentlemen to invite ladies to go on an 
excursion. He could invite the lady's mother to chap- 
eron a theatre party which he had paid for. 

Another young lady asks if she could with propri- 
ety buy the tickets and take a young gentleman to 
the theatre. Of course she could, if her mother or 
chaperon would go with her ; but even then the 
mother or chaperon should w r rite the note of invi- 
tation. 

But in our free country it is, w 7 e hear, particularly 
in the West, allowable for a young lady and gentle- 
man to go off on " an excursion " together, the gen- 
tleman paying all the expenses. If that is allowed, 
then, of course — to answer our correspondent's ques- 
tion — she should thank him. But if we were to an- 
swer the young lady's later question, " Would this be 
considered etiquette ?" we should say, decidedly, No. 



f 



OLD FORM OF SALUTATION. 295 

Another question which we are perpetually asked 
is this: How to allow a gentleman a proper degree of 
friendly intimacy without allowing him to think him- 
self too much of a favorite. Here Ave cannot bring 
in either etiquette or custom to decide. One very 
general law would be not to accept too many atten- 
tions, to show a certain reserve in dancing with him 
or driving with him. It is always proper for a gen- 
tleman to take a young lady out to drive in his dog- 
cart with his servant behind, if her parents approve ; 
but if it is done very often, of course it looks con- 
spicuous, and the lady runs the risk of being consid- 
ered engaged. And she knows, of course, whether 
her looks and words give him reason to think that he 
is a favorite. She must decide all that herself. 

Another writes to ask us if she should take a gen- 
tleman's hat and coat when he calls. Xever. Let 
him take care of those. Christianity and chivalry, 
modern and ancient custom, make a man the ser- 
vant of women. The old form of salutation used by 
Sir Walter Raleigh and other courtiers was always, 
" Your servant, madam," and it is the prettiest and 
most admirable way for a man to address a woman 
in any language. 

Another asks if she should introduce a gentleman 
who calls to her mother. This, we should say, would 
answer itself did not the question re-appear. Of course 
she should ; and her mother should always sit with 
"her when she is receiving a call from a gentleman. 

But if in our lesser fashionable circles the restric- 
tions of etiquette are relaxed, let a young lady always 
remember these general principles, that men will like 



296 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

and respect her far better if she is extremely particu- 
lar about allowing them to pay for her, if she refuses 
two invitations out of three, if she is dignified and 
reserved rather than if she is the reverse. 

At Newport it is now the fashion for young ladies 
to drive young men out in their pony-phaetons with 
a groom behind, or even without a groom; but a gen- 
tleman never takes out a lady in his own carriage 
without a servant. 

Gentlemen and ladies walk together in the daytime 
unattended, but if they ride on horseback a groom 
is always in attendance on the lady. In rural neigh- 
borhoods where there are no grooms, and where a 
young lady and gentleman go off for a drive unat- 
tended, they have thrown Old-World etiquette out of 
the window, and must make a new etiquette of their 
own. Propriety, mutual respect, and American chiv- 
alry have done for women what all the surveillance 
of Spanish duennas and of French etiquette has done 
for the young girl of Europe. If a woman is a work- 
er, an artist, a student, or an author, she can walk the 
Quartier Latin of Paris unharmed. 

But she has in work an armor of proof. This is not - 
etiquette when she comes into the world of fashion. 
She must observe etiquette, as she would do the laws 
of Prussia or of England, if she stands on foreign shores. 

Perhaps we can illustrate this. Given a pretty 
young girl who shall arrive on the steamer Germania 
after being several years at school in Paris, another 
who comes in by rail from Kansas, another from some 
quiet, remote part of Georgia, and leave them all at 
the New York Hotel for a winter. Let us imagine 



VIOLATIONS OF PROPRIETY. *297 

them all introduced at a New York ball to three gen- 
tlemen, who shall call on them the next day. If the 
girl educated in Paris, sitting by her mamma, hears 
the others talk to the young men she will be shocked. 
The girls who have been brought up far from the cen- 
tres of etiquette seem to her to have no modesty, no 
propriety. They accept invitations from the young 
men to go to the theatre alone, to take drives, and 
perhaps, as we have said, to " go on an excursion." 

To the French girl this seems to be a violation of 
propriety; but later on she accepts an invitation to 
go out on a coach, with perhaps ten or twelve others, 
and with a very young chaperon. The party does not 
return until twelve at night, and as they walk through 
the corridors to a late supper the young Western girl 
meets them, and sees that the young men are already 
the worse for wine : she is apt to say, " What a rowdy 
crowd !" and to think that, after all, etiquette per- 
mits its own sins, in which she is right. 

In a general statement it may be as well to say that 
a severe etiquette would prevent a young lady from 
receiving gifts from a young man, except bonbonnilres 
and bouquets. It is not considered proper for him 
to offer her clothing of any sort — as gowns, bonnets, 
shawls, or shoes — even if he is engaged to her. She 
may use her discretion about accepting a camelVhair 
shawl from a man old enough to be her father, but 
she should never receive jewellery from any one but 
a relative or her Ji an c'e just before marriage. The 
reason for this is obvious. It has been abused — the 
privilege which all men desire, that of decking women 
with finerv. 



298 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

A young lady should not write letters to young 
men, or send them presents, or take the initiative in 
any way. A friendly correspondence is very proper 
if the mother approves, but even this has its dangers. 
Let a young lady always remember that she is to the 
young man an angel to reverence until she lessens the 
distance between them and extinguishes respect. 

Young women often write to us as to whether it is 
proper for them to write letters of condolence or 
congratulation to ladies older than themselves. We 
should say, Yes. The respect of young girls is always 
felt gratefully by older ladies. The manners of the 
present are vastly to be objected to on account of a 
lack of respect. The rather bitter Mr. Carlyle wrote 
satirically of the manners of young ladies. He even 
had his fling at their laugh : " Few are able to laugh 
what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter 
from the throat outward, or at best produce some 
whiffling husky cachinnations as if they were laughing 
through wool. Of none such comes good. 55 A young 
lady must not speak too loud or be too boisterous ; she 
must even tone down her wit, lest she be misunder- 
stood. But she need not be dull, or grumpy, or ill- 
tempered, or careless of her manners, particularly to 
her mother's old friends. She must not talk slang, or 
be in any way masculine ; if she is, she loses the bat- 
tle. A young lady is sometimes called upon to be a 
hostess if her mother is dead. Here her liberty be- 
comes greater, but she should always have an aunt or 
some elderly friend by her side to play chaperon. 

A young lady may do any manual labor without 
losing caste. She may be a good cook, a fine laundress, 



PRUDENCE TO EE OBSERVED, 299 

a carver of wood, a painter, a sculptor, an embroid- 
eress, a writer, a physician, and she will be eligible, 
if her manners are good, to the best society anywhere. 
But if she outrage the laws of good-breeding in the 
place where she is, she cannot expect to take her place 
in society. Should she be seen at Xewport driving 
two gentlemen in her pony-phaeton, or should she and 
another young woman take a gentleman between them 
and drive down Bellevue Avenue, she would be ta- 
booed. It would not be a wicked act, but it would 
not look well; it would not be convenabk. If she 
dresses " loudly," with peculiar hats and a suspicious 
complexion, she must take the consequences. She 
must be careful (if she is unknown) not to attempt to 
copy the follies of well-known fashionable women. 
What will be forgiven to Mrs. Well Known Uptown 
will never be forgiven to Miss Kansas. Society in this 
respect is very unjust — the world is always unjust — 
but that is a part of the truth of etiquette which is to 
be remembered; it is founded on the accidental con- 
ditions of society, having for its background, however, 
the eternal principles of kindness, politeness, and the 
greatest good of society. 

A young lady who is very prominent in society 
should not make herself too common; she should not 
appear in too many charades, private theatricals, tab- 
leaux, etc. She should think of the u violet by the 
mossy stone." She must, also, at a watering -pL 
remember that every act of hers is being criticised by 
a set of lookers-on who are not all friendly, and she 
must, ere she allow herself to be too much of a belle, 
remember to silence envious tomzu 



300 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE MANNERS OF THE PAST. 

In these days, amid what has been strongly stated 
as "the prevailing mediocrity of manners," a study 
of the manners of the past would seem to reveal to 
us the fact that in those days of ceremony a man who 
was beset with shyness need then have suffered less 
than he would do now in these clays of impertinence 
and brass. 

A man was not then expected to enter a room and 
to dash at once into a lively conversation. The stately 
influence of the minuet de la cour was upon him ; he 
deliberately entered a room, made a low bow, and sat 
down, waiting to be spoken to. 

Indeed, we may go farther back and imagine our- 
selves at the court of Louis XIV., when the world 
was broadly separated into the two classes — the noble 
and the bourgeois. That world which Moliere divided 
in his dramatis personce into the courtier, the provin- 
cial noble, and the plain gentleman; and secondly, into 
the men of law and medicine, the merchant, and the 
shopkeeper. These divisions shall be for a moment 
considered. Now, all these men knew exactly, from 
the day when they reached ten years of age, how they 
were expected to behave in the sphere of life to which 
they were called. The marquis was instructed in 



DEPORTMENT. 301 

every art of graceful behavior, the bel air was taught 
him as we teach our boys how to dance, even more 
thoroughly. The grand seigneur of those days, the 
man who would not arrange the folds of his own cra- 
vat with his own hands, and who exacted an observ- 
ance as punctilious from his valets as if he were the 
king himself, that marquis of whom the great Moliere 
makes such fun, the courtier whom even the grand 
monarque liked to see ridiculed — this man had, never- 
theless, good manners. We see him reflected with 
marvellous fidelity in those wonderful comedies of 
the French Shakespeare ; he is more than the fashion 
of an epoch — he is one of the eternal types of human 
nature. We learn what a man becomes whose busi- 
ness is "deportment." Even despicable as he is in 
"Le Bourgeoise Gentilhomme" — flattering, borrowing 
money, cheating the poor citizen, and using his rank 
as a mask and excuse for his vices — we still read that 
it was such a one as he who took poor Moliere's cold 
hands in his and put them in his muff, when, on the 
last dreadful day of the actor's life (with a liberality 
which does his memory immortal honor), he strove to 
play, "that fifty poor workmen might receive their 
daily pay." It was such a one as this who was 
kind to poor Moliere. There was in these gens de cour 
a copy of fine feeling, even if they had it not. They 
were polite and elegant, making the people about them 
feel better for the moment, doing graceful acts cour- 
teously, and gilding vice with the polish of perfect 
manners. The bourgeois, according to Moliere, v 
as bad a man as the courtier, but he had, b 
brutal manners; and as for the magistrates and mer- 



302 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

chants, they were harsh and surly, and very sparing 
of civility. No wonder, when the French Revolution 
came, that one of the victims, regretting the not-yet- 
forgotten marquis, desired the return of the aristoc- 
racy; for, said he, "I would rather be trampled upon 
by a velvet slipper than a wooden shoe." 

It is the best definition of manners — "a velvet slip- 
per rather than a wooden shoe." We ask very little 
of the people whom Ave casually meet but that the 
salutation be pleasant; and as we remember how many 
crimes and misfortunes have arisen from sudden an- 
ger, caused sometimes by pure breaches of good man- 
ners, we almost agree with Burke that " manners are 
of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great 
measure, the laws depend." 

Some one calls politeness " benevolence in trifles, 
the preference of others to ourselves in little, daily, 
hourly occurrences in the business of life, a better 
place, a more commodious seat, priority in being 
helped at table," etc. 

Now, in all these minor morals the marquis was a 
benevolent man; he was affable and both well and 
fair spoken, " and would use strange sweetness and 
blandishment of words when he desired to affect or 
persuade anything that he took to heart" — that is, with 
his equals. It is well to study this man, and to re- 
member that he was not always vile. The Prince of 
Conde had these manners and a generous, great heart 
as well. Gentleness really belongs to virtue, and a 
sycophant can hardly imitate it well. The perfect 
gentleman is he who has a strong heart under the 
silken doublet of a perfect manner. 



NECESSITY OF A CONCILIATORY SPIRIT. 303 

We do not want all the decent drapery of life torn 
off; we do not want to be told that we are full of de- 
fects ; Y> T e do not wish people to show us a latent an- 
tagonism; and if we have in ourselves the elements of 
roughness, severity of judgment, a critical eye which 
sees defects rather than virtues, we are bound to 
study how to tone down that native, disagreeable 
temper — just as we are bound to try to break the icy 
formality of a reserved manner, and to cultivate a 
cordiality which we do not feel. Such a command 
over the shortcomings of our own natures is not insin- 
cerity, as we often find that the effort to make our- 
selves agreeable towards some one whom we dislike 
ends in leading us to like the offending person. We 
find that we have really been the offender, going 
about with a moral tape-measure graduated by our- 
selves, and measuring the opposite party with a serene 
conceit which has called itself principle or honor, or 
some high-sounding name, while it was really nothing 
but prejudice. 

We should try to carry entertainment with us, and 
to seem entertained with our company. A friendly 
behavior often conciliates and pleases more than wit 
or brilliancy; and here we come back to those polished 
manners of the past, which were a perfect drapery, 
and therefore should be studied, and perhaps in a de- 
gree copied, by the awkward and the shy, who cannot 
depend upon themselves for inspirations of agreeabil- 
ity. Emerson says that " fashion is good-sense enter- 
taining company; it hates corners and sharp points of 
character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and 
gloomy people, hates whatever can interfere with total 



304 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

blending of parties, while it values all particularities 
as in the highest degree refreshing which can consist 
with good-fellowship." 

It does the awkward and the shy good to contem- 
plate these words. It may not immediately help them 
to become graceful and self-possessed, but it will cer- 
tainly have a very good effect in inducing them to 

try. 

We find that the successful man of the world has 
studied the temper of the finest sword. He can bend 
easily, he is flexible, he is pliant, and yet he has not 
lost the bravery and the power of his weapon. Men 
of the bar, for instance, have been at the trouble to 
construct a system of politeness, in which even an of- 
fensive self-estimation takes on the garb of humility. 
The harmony is preserved, a trial goes on with an 
appearance of deference and respect each to the other, 
highly, most highly, commendable, and producing law 
and order where otherwise we might find strife, ha- 
tred, and warfare. Although this may be a mimic 
humility, although the compliments may be judged 
insincere, they are still the shadows of the very high- 
est virtues. The man who is guarding his speech is 
ruling his spirit; he is keeping his temper, that fur- 
nace of all affliction, and the lofty chambers of his 
brain are cool and full of fresh air. 

A man who is by nature clownish, and who has 
what he calls a " noble sincerity," is very apt to do 
injustice to the polished man ; he should, however, 
remember that " the manner of a vulgar man has free- 
dom without ease, and that the manner of a gentle- 
man has ease without freedom." A man with an 



WHATELY ON SHYNESS. 305 

obliging, agreeable address may be just as sincere as 
if he had the noble art of treading on everybody's 
toes. The "putter-down-upon-system" man is quite as 
often urged by love of display as by a love of truth; 
he is ungenerous, combative, and ungenial ; he is the 
"bravo of society." 

To some people a fine manner is the gift of nature. 
We see a young person enter a room, make himself 
charming, go through the transition period of boy to 
man, always graceful, and at man's estate aim to still 
possess that unconscious and flattering grace, that 
"most exquisite taste of politeness," which is a gift 
from the gods. He is exactly formed to please, this 
lucky creature, and all this is done for him by nature. 
We are disposed to abuse Mother Nature when we 
think of this boy's heritage of joy compared with her 
step-son, to whom she has given the burning blushes, 
the awkward step, the heavy self-consciousness, the 
uncourtly gait, the hesitating speech, and the bashful 
demeanor. 

But nothing would be omitted by either parent or 
child to cure the boy if he had a twisted ankle, so 
nothing should be omitted that can cure the twist 
of shyness, and therefore a shy young person should 
not be expected to confront such a trial. 

And to those who have the bringing up of shy 
young persons we commend these excellent words of 
Whately : " There are many otherwise sensible peo- 
ple who seek to cure a young person of that very 
common complaint — shyness — by exhorting him not 
to be shy, telling him what an awkward appearance 
it has, and that it prevents his doing himself justice. 



306 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

all of which is manifestly pouring oil on the fire to 
quench it; for the very cause of shyness is an over- 
anxiety as to what people are thinking of you, a mor- 
bid attention to your own appearance. The course, 
therefore, that ought to be pursued is exactly the re- 
verse. The sufferer should be exhorted to think as 
little as possible about himself and the opinion formed 
of him, to be assured that most of the company do 
not trouble their heads about him, and to harden him 
against any impertinent criticisms that he supposed 
to be going on, taking care only to do what is right, 
leaving others to say and to think what they will." 

All this philosophy is excellent, and is like the sen- 
sible archbishop. But the presence of a set of care- 
fully cultivated, artificial manners, or a hat to hold in 
one's hand, will better help the shy person when he is 
first under fire, and when his senses are about desert- 
ing him, than any moral maxims can be expected to do. 

Carlyle speaks of the fine manners of his peasant 
father (which he does not seem to have inherited), 
and he says : " I think that they came from his hav- 
ing, early in life, worked for Maxwell, of Keir, a 
Scotch gentleman of great dignity and worth, who 
gave to all those under him a fine impression of the 
governing classes." Old Carlyle had no shame in 
standing with his hat off as his landlord passed ; he 
had no truckling spirit either of paying court to those 
whose lot in life it was to be his superiors. 

Those manners of the past were studied; they had, 
no doubt, much about them which we should now call 
stiff, formal, and affected, but they were a great help 
to the awkward and the shy. 



GOOD CLOTHES A HELP TO THE SHY. 307 

In the past our ancestors had the help of cos- 
tume, which we have not. Xothing is more defence- 
less than a being in a dress-coat, with no pockets 
allowable in which he can put his hands. If a man 
is in a costume he forgets the sufferings of the coat 
and pantaloon. He has a sense of being in a fortress. 
A military man once said that he always fought bet- 
ter in his uniform — that a fashionably cut coat and 
an every-day hat took all heroism out of him. 

Women, particularly shy ones, feel the effect of 
handsome clothes as a reinforcement. " There is an 
appid in a good gown," said Madame de Stael. There- 
fore, the awkward and the shy, in attempting to con- 
quer the manners of artificial society, should dress as 
well as possible. Perhaps to their taste in dress do 
Frenchmen owe much of their easy civility and their 
success in social politics ; and herein women are very 
much more fortunate than men, for they can always 
ask, " Is it becoming ?" and can add the handkerchief, 
fan, muff, or mantle as a refuge for trembling hands. 
A man has only his pockets ; he does not wish to 
always appear with his hands in them. 

Taste is said to be the instantaneous, ready appre- 
ciation of the fitness of things. To most of us who 
may regret the want of it in ourselves, it seems to be 
the instinct of the fortunate few. Some women look 
as if they had simply blossomed out of their inner 
consciousness into a beautiful toilet ; others are the 
creatures of chance, and look as if their clothes had 
been hurled at them by a tornado. 

Some women, otherwise good and true, have a sort 
of moral want of taste, and wear too bright color-. 



308 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

too many glass beads, too much hair, and a combina- 
tion of discordant materials which causes the heart of 
a good dresser to ache with anguish. This want of 
taste runs across the character like an intellectual 
bar-sinister, forcing us to believe that their conclu- 
sions are anything but legitimate. People who say 
innocently things which shock you, who put the lis- 
teners at a dinner-table upon tenter-hooks, are either 
w T anting in taste or their minds are confused with 
shyness. 

A person thus does great injustice to his own moral 
qualities when he permits himself to be misrepresent- 
ed by that disease of which w r e speak. Shyness per- 
verts the speech more than vice even. But if a man 
or a woman can look down on a well-fitting, becoming 
dress (even if it is the barren and forlorn dress which 
men wore to parties in 1882), it is still an appui. 
We know how it offends us to see a person in a dress 
wilich is inappropriate. A chief -justice in the war- 
paint and feathers of an Indian chief would scarcely 
be listened to, even if his utterances were those of a 
Marshall or a Jay. 

It takes a great person, a courageous person, to bear 
the shame of unbecoming dress; and, no doubt, to a 
nature shy, passionate, proud, and poor, the necessity 
of wearing poor or unbecoming clothes has been an 
injury for life. He despised himself for his weakness, 
but the weakness remained. When the French Rev- 
olution came in with its sans-calotteism, and republi- 
can simplicity found its perfect expression in Thomas 
Jefferson, still, the prejudices of powdered hair and 
stiff brocades remained. They gradually disappeared, 



PARTIAL RETURN TO FORMER MANNERS. 309 

and the man of the nineteenth century lost the advan- 
tages of becoming dress, and began anew the battle 
of life stripped of all his trappings. Manners went 
with these flowing accessaries, and the abrupt speech, 
curt bow, and rather exaggerated simplicity of the 
present day came in. 

But it is a not unworthy study — these manners of the 
past. We are returning, at least on the feminine side, 
to a great and magnificent " princess," or queenly, style 
of dress. It is becoming the fashion to make a courte- 
sy, to flourish a fan, to bear one's self with dignity 
when in this fine costume. Cannot the elegance, the 
repose, and the respectfulness of the past return also ? 



310 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE MANNERS OF THE OPTIMIST. 

It is very easy to laugh at the optimist, and to ac- 
cuse him of " poetizing the truth." No doubt, an op- 
timist will see excellence, beauty, and truth where 
pessimists see only degradation, vice, and ugliness. 
The one hears the nightingale, the other the raven 
only. To one, the sunsetting forms a magic picture; 
to the other, it is but a presage of bad weather to- 
morrow. Some people seem to look at nature through 
a glass of red wine or in a Claude Lorraine mirror; 
to them the landscape has ever the bloom of summer 
or a spring-tide grace. To others, it is always cloudy, 
dreary, dull. The desolate ravine, the stony path, the 
blighted heath — that is all they can find in a book 
which should have a chapter for everybody. And the 
latter are apt to call the former dreamers, visionaries, 
fools. They are dubbed in society often flatterers, 
people whose "geese are all swans." 

But are those, then, the fools who see only the 
pleasant side? Are they alone the visionaries who see 
the best rather than the worst? It is strange that the 
critics see only weakness in the " pleasant - spoken," 
and only truth and safety in those who croak. 

The person who sees a bright light in an eye other- 
wise considered dull, who distrusts the last scandal, 



FACULTY OF OBSERVATION AND LANGUAGE. 311 

is supposed to be foolish, too easily pleased, and want- 
ing in that wise scepticism which should be the hand- 
maid of common-sense; and if such a person in tell- 
ing a story poetizes the truth, if it is a principle or a 
tendency to believe the best of everybody, to take 
everybody at their highest note, is she any the less 
canny? Has she necessarily less insight? As there 
are always two sides to a shield, why not look at the 
golden one? 

An excess of the organ of hope has created people 
like Colonel Sellers in the play, who deluded himself 
that there were " millions in it," who landed in pov- 
erty and wrecked his friends; but this excess is scarce- 
ly a common one. Far more often does discourage- 
ment paralyze than does hope exalt. Those who have 
sunshine for themselves and to spare are apt to be 
happy and useful people; they are in the aggregate 
the successful people. 

But, although good -nature is temperamental, and 
although some men and women are, by their force of 
imagination and charity, forced to poetize the truth, 
the question remains an open one, Which is the near- 
est to truth, a pessimist or an optimist ? Truth is a 
virtue more palpable and less shadowy than we think. 
It is not easy to speak the unvarnished, uncorrupted 
truth (so the lawyers tell us). The faculty of obser- 
vation differs, and the faculty of language is variable. 
Some people have no intellectual apprehension of the 
truth, although they morally believe in it. People 
who abstractly revere the truth have never been able 
to tell anything but falsehoods. To such the power 
of making a statement either favorable or prejudicial 



312 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

depends upon the mood of the moment, not upon fact. 
Therefore a habit of poetizing the truth would 
seem to be of either excess the safest. Society be- 
comes sometimes a hot-bed of evil passions — one per- 
son succeeds at the expense of another. How severe 
is the suffering proceeding from social neglect and 
social stabs! It might, much of it, be smoothed away 
by poetizing the truth ever so little. Instead of 
bearing an ill-natured message, suppose we carry an 
amiable one. Instead of believing that an insult was 
intended, suppose a compliment. 

"Should he upbraid, I'll own that he prevail, 
And sing more sweetly than the nightingale! 
Say that he frown, 111 own his looks I view 
Like morning roses newly dipped in dew." 

People who are thus calmly serene and amiable 
through the frowns and smiles, the ups and downs, of 
a social career are often called worldly. 

Well, let us suppose that they are. Some author has 
wisely said: "That the world should be full of world- 
liness seems as right as that a stream should be full of 
water or a living body full of blood." To conquer 
this world, to get out of it a full, abounding, agreeable 
life, is what we are put here for. Else, why such gifts 
as beauty, talent, health, wit, and a power of enjoy- 
ment be given to us ? To be worldly, or worldlings, 
is supposed to be incurring the righteous anger of the 
good. But is it not improperly using a term of im- 
plied reproach? For, although the world may be too 
much with us, and a worldling may be a being not 
filled to the brim with the deeper qualities or the 



THE PESSIMIST AND OPTIMIST. 313 

highest aims, still he is a man necessary to the day, 
the hour, the sphere which must be supplied with peo- 
ple fitted to its needs. So with a woman in socic 
She must be a worldling in the best sense of the word. 
She must keep up her corner of the great mantle of 
the Field of the Cloth of Gold. She must fill the so- 
cial arena with her influence; for in society she is a 
most important factor. 

Then, as a " complex overgrowth of wants and frui- 
tions " has covered our world as with a banyan-tree, 
we must have something else to keep alive our um- 
brageous growth of art, refinement, inventions, luxu- 
ries, and delicate sensibilities. We must have wealth. 

"Wealth is the golden essence of the outer world," ' 

and therefore to be respected. 

Of course the pessimist sees purse-pride, pompous 
and outrageous arrogance, a cringing of the pregnant 
hinges of the knee, false standards, and a thousand 
faults in this admission. And yet the optimist finds 
the "very rich,*' with but few exceptions, amiable, 
generous, and kindly, often regretting that poorer 
friends will allow their wealth to bar them off, wish- 
ing often that their opulence need not shut them off 
from the little dinners, the homely hospitality, the 
small gifts, the sincere courtesies of those wh 
means are moderate. The cheerful people who ! 
not dismayed by the superior magnificence of a friend 
are very apt to find that friend quite as anxious for 
sympathy and for kindness as are the poor, ially 

if his wealth has caused him, almost necessarily, to 
live upon the superficial and the external in life. 



314 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

We all know that there is a worldly life, poor in 
aim and narrow in radius, which is as false as possi- 
ble. To live only for this world, with its changing 
fashions, its imperfect judgments, its toleration of 
snobs and of sinners, its forgiveness of ignorance 
under a high-sounding name, its exaggeration of the 
transient and the artificial, would be a poor life in- 
deed. But, if we can lift ourselves up into the high- 
er comprehension of what a noble thing this world 
really is, we may well aspire to be worldlings. 

Julius Caesar was a worldling ; so was Shakespeare. 
Erasmus was a worldling. We might increase the 
list indefinitely. These men brought the loftiest tal- 
ents to the use of worldly things. They showed how 
great conquest, poetry, thought might become used 
for the world. They were full of this world. 

To see everything through a poetic vision (the only 
genuine idealization) is and has been the gift of the 
benefactors of our race. Beranger was of the world, 
worldly; but can we give him up? So were the great 
artists who flooded the world with light — Titian, Tin- 
toretto, Correggio, Raphael, Rubens, Watteau. These 
men poetized the truth. Life was a brilliant drama, 
a splendid picture, a garden ever fresh and fair. 

The optimist carries a lamp through dark, social ob- 
structions. "I would fain bind up many wounds, if I 
could be assured that neither by stupidity nor by mal- 
ice I need make one!" is her motto, the true optimist. 

It is a fine allegory upon the implied power of so- 
ciety that the poet Marvell used when he said he 
" would not drink wine with any one to whom he 
could not trust his life." 



TENDENCY TO OPTIMISM. 315 

Titian painted his women with all their best points 
visible. There was a careful shadow or drapery 
which hid the defects which none of us are without; 
but defects to the eye of the optimist make beauty 
more attractive by contrast; in a portrait they may 
better be hid perhaps. 

To poetize the truth in the science of charity 
and forgiveness can never be a great sin. If it is 
one, the recording angel will probably drop a te 
This tendency to optimism is, we think, more like 
that magic wand which the great idealist waved over 
a troubled sea, or like those sudden sunsets after a 
storm, which not only control the wave, but gild the 
leaden mass with crimson and unexpected gold, 
whose brightness may reach some storm-driven sail, 
giving it the light of hope, bringing the ship to a 
well - defined and hospitable shore, and regulating, 
with a new attraction, the lately distracted comp; 
Therefore, we do not hesitate to say that the philoso- 
phy, and the creed, and the manners of the optimist 
are good for society. However, his excellence may 
well be criticised ; it may even sometimes take 
place amid those excesses which are catalogued 
amid the u deformities of exaggerated virtues." We 
may be too good, some of us, in one single direction. 

But the rounded and harmonious Greek calm is hard 
to find. "For repose and serenity of mind/' says a 
modern author, "we must go back to the Greek tem- 
ple and statue, the Greek epic and drama, the Greek 
oration and moral treatise : and modern education 
will never become truly effectual till it brings no 
minds into happy contact with the ideal of a bal- 



316 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

anced, harmonious development of all the powers of 
mind, body, conscience, and heart." 

And who was a greater optimist than your Atheni- 
an? He had a passionate love of nature, a rapt and 
infinite adoration of beauty, and he diffused the splen- 
did radiance of his genius in making life more attrac- 
tive and the grave less gloomy. Perhaps we of a bright- 
er faith and a more certain revelation may borrow 
something from this " heathen " Greek. 



PECULIARITIES OF SHY PEOPLE. 317 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE MANNERS OF THE SYMPATHETIC. 

Sympathy is the most delicate tendril of the mind, 
and the most fascinating gift which nature can give 
to us. The most precious associations of the human 
heart cluster around the word, and we love to remem- 
ber those who have sorrowed with us in sorrow, and 
rejoiced with us when we were glad. But for the 
awkward and the shy, the sympathetic are the very 
worst company. They do not wish to be sympathized 
with — they wish to be with people who are cold and 
indifferent; they like shy people like themselves. Put 
two shy people in a room together, and they begin to 
talk with unaccustomed glibness. A shy woman al- 
ways attracts a shy man. But women who are gifted 
with that rapid, gay impressionability which puts them 
en rapport with their surroundings, who have fancy 
and an excitable disposition, a quick susceptibility to 
the influences around them, are very charming in gen- 
eral society, but they are terrible to the awkward and 
the shy. They sympathize too much, they are too 
aware of that burning shame which the sufferer de- 
sires to conceal. 

The moment that a shy person sees before him a 
perfectly unsympathetic person, one who is neither 
thinking nor caring for him, his shyness begins to flee; 



318 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

the moment that he recognizes a fellow- sufferer he 
begins to feel a reinforcement of energy. If he be a 
lover, especially, the almost certain embarrassment of 
the lady inspires him with hope and with renewed 
courage. A woman who has a bashful lover, even if 
she is afflicted with shyness, has been known to find a 
way to help the poor fellow out of his dilemma more 
than once. Hawthorne, who has left us the most com- 
plete and most tragic history of shyness which belongs 
to " that long rosary on which the blushes of a life are 
strung," found a woman (the most perfect character, 
apparently, who ever married and made happy a great 
genius) who, fortunately for him, was shy naturally, 
although without that morbid shyness which accom- 
panied him through life. Those who knew Mrs. Haw- 
thorne later found her possessed of great fascination of 
manner, even in general society, where Hawthorne was 
quite impenetrable. The story of his running down 
to the Concord River and taking boat to escape his 
visitors has been long familiar to us all. Mrs. Haw- 
thorne, no doubt, with a woman's tact and a woman's 
generosity, overcame her own shyness in order to re- 
ceive those guests whom Hawthorne ran away from, 
and through life remained his better angel. It was 
through this absence of expressed sympathy that Eng- 
lish people became very agreeable to Hawthorne. He 
describes, in his " Note Book," a speech made by him 
at a dinner in England : " When I was called upon," 
he says, " I rapped my head, and it returned a hollow 
sound." 

He had, however, been sitting next to a shy English 
lawyer, a man who won upon him by his quiet, unob- 



319 

trusive simplicity, and who, in some well-chosen words, 
rather made light of dinner-speaking and its terrors. 
When Hawthorne finally got up and made his speech, 
his "voice, meantime, having a far-off and remote 
echo," and when, as we learn from others, a burst of 
applause greeted the few well-chosen words drawn up 
from that full well of thought, that pellucid rill of 
"English undefiled," the unobtrusive gentleman by 
his side applauded, and said to him, " It was hand- 
somely done." The compliment pleased the shy man. 
It is the only compliment to himself which Hawthorne 
ever recorded. 

Now, had Hawthorne been congratulated by a sym- 
pathetic, effusive American who had clapped him on 
the back, and who had said, "Oh, never fear — you will 
speak well!" he would have said nothing. The shy 
sprite in his own eyes would have read in his neigh- 
bor's eyes the dreadful truth that his sympathetic 
neighbor would have indubitably betrayed — a fear 
that he would not do well. The phlegmatic and stony 
Englishman neither felt nor cared whether Hawthorne 
spoke well or ill ; and, although pleased that he did 
speak well, invested no particular sympathy in the 
matter, either for or against, and so spared Haw- 
thorne's shyness the last bitter drop in the cup, which 
would have been a recognition of his own moral dread. 
Hawthorne bitterly records his own sufferings. He 
says, in one of his books, "At this time I acquired this 
accursed habit of solitude." It has been said that the 
Hawthorne family were, in the earlier generation, af- 
flicted with- shyness almost as a disease — certainly a 
curious freak of nature in a family descended from 



320 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES, 

robust sea-captains. It only goes to prove how far 
away are the influences which control our natures and 
our actions. 

Whether, if Hawthorne had not been a shy man, 
afflicted with a sort of horror of his species at times, 
always averse to letting himself go, miserable and 
morbid, we should have been the inheritors of the great- 
fortune which he has left us, is not for us to decide. 
Whether we should have owned "The Gentle Boy," 
the immortal " Scarlet Letter," " The House with 
Seven Gables," the "Marble Faun," and all the 
other wonderful things which grew out of that se- 
cluded and gifted nature, had he been born a cheer- 
ful, popular, and sympathetic boy, with a dancing- 
school manner, instead of an awkward and shy 
youth (although an exceedingly handsome one), we 
cannot tell. That is the great secret behind the veil. 
The answer is not yet made, the oracle has not 
spoken, and we must not invade the penumbra of 
genius. 

It has always been a comfort to the awkward and 
the shy that Washington could not make an after- 
dinner speech ; and the well-known anecdote — " Sit 
down, Mr. Washington, your modesty is even greater 
than your valor " — -must have consoled many a voice- 
less hero. Washington Irving tried to welcome 
Dickens, but failed in the attempt, while Dickens was 
as voluble as he was gifted. Probably the very sur- 
roundings of sympathetic admirers unnerved both 
Washington and Irving, although there are some men 
who can never " speak on their legs," as the saying 
goes, in any society. 



THE UNCERTAINTY OF THE VOICE. 321 

Other shy men — men who fear general society, and 
show embarrassment in the every-day surroundings — 
are eloquent when they get on their feet. Many a 
shy boy at college has astonished his friends by his 
ability in an after-dinner speech. Many a voluble, 
glib boy, who has. been appointed the orator of the oc- 
casion, fails utterly, disappoints public expectation, 
and sits down with an uncomfortable mantle of failure 
upon his shoulders. Therefore, the ways of shyness 
are inscrutable. Many a woman who has never known 
what it was to be bashful or shy has, when called 
upon to read a copy of verses, even to a circle of in- 
timate friends, lost her voice, and has utterly broken 
down, to her own and her friends' great astonish- 
ment. 

The voice is a treacherous servant ; it deserts us, 
trembles, makes a failure of it, is "not present or ac- 
counted for" often when we need its help. It is not 
alone in the shriek of the hysterical that we learn of 
its lawlessness, it is in its complete retirement. A 
bride, often, even when she felt no other embarrass- 
ment, has found that she had no voice with which to 
make her responses. It simply was not there ! 

A lady who was presented at court, and who felt — 
as she described herself — wonderfully at her ease, be- 
gan talking, and, without wishing to speak loud, dis- 
covered that she was shouting like a trumpeter. The 
somewhat unusual strain which she had put upon her- 
self, during the ordeal of being presented at the Eng- 
lish court, revenged itself by an outpouring of voice 
which she could not control. 

Many shy people have recognized in themselves this 

21 



322 MANNERS ANi> SOCIAL USAGES. 

curious and unconscious elevation of the voice. It is 
not so common as a loss of voice, but it is quite as un- 
controllable. 

The bronchial tubes play us another trick when we 
are frightened: the voice is the voice of somebody 
else, it has no resemblance to our own. Ventriloquism 
might well study the phenomena of shyness, for the 
voice becomes bass that was treble, and soprano that 
which was contralto. 

" I dislike to have Wilthorpe come to see me," said 
a very shy woman — "I know my voice will squeak 
so." With her Wilthorpe, who for some reason drove 
her into an agony of shyness, had the effect of mak- 
ing her talk in a high, unnatural strain, excessively 
fatiguing. 

The presence of one's own family, who are naturally 
painfully sympathetic, has always had upon the bash- 
ful and the shy a most evil effect. 

"I can never plead a cause before my father." 
" Nor I before my son," said two distinguished law- 
yers. "If mamma is in the room, I shall never be 
able to get through my part," said a young amateur 
actor. 

But here we must pause to note another exception 
in the laws of shyness. 

In the false perspective of the stage shyness often 
disappears. The shy man, speaking the words, and 
assuming the character of another, often loses his shy- 
ness. It is himself of whom he is afraid, not of Tony 
Lumpkin or of Charles Surface, of Hamlet or of Claude 
Melnotte. Behind their masks he can speak well; but 
if he at his own dinner - table essays to speak, and 



METHOD OF CONVERSING WITH SHY PEOPLE. 323 

mamma watches him with sympathetic eyes, and his 
brothers and sisters are all listening, he fails. 

" Lord Percy sees me fall." 

Yet it is with our own people that we must stand or 
fall, live or die; it is in cur own circle that we mi 
conquer our shyness. 

Now, these reflections are not intended as an argu- 
ment against sympathy properly expressed. A rea- 
sonable and judiciously expressed sympathy with our 
fellow-beings is the very highest attribute of our nature. 
" It unravels secrets more surely than the highest crit- 
ical faculty. Analysis of motives that sway men and 
women is like the knife of the anatomist : it works on 
the dead. Unite sympathy to observation, and the 
dead spring to life." It is thus to the shy, in their 
moments of tremor, that we should endeavor to be 
calmly unsympathetic; not cruel, but indifferent, un- 
observant. 

Now, women of genius who obtain a reflected com- 
prehension of certain aspects of life through sympathy 
often arrive at the admirable result of apprehending 
the sufferings of the shy without seeming to observe 
them. Such a woman, in talking to a shy man. will 
not seem to see him ; she will prattle on about herself, 
or tell some funny anecdote of how she was tumbl 
out into the snow, or how she spilled her glass of 
claret at dinner, or how she got just too late to the 
lecture ; and while she is thus absorbed in her little 
improvised autobiography, the shy man gets hold of 
himself and ceases to be afraid of her. This ifl the 
secret of tact. 



324 MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES. 

Madame Recamier, the famous beauty, was always 
somewhat shy. She was not a wit, but she possessed 
the gift of drawing out what was best in others. Her 
biographers have blamed her that she had not a more 
impressionable temper, that she was not more sympa- 
thetic. Perhaps (in spite of her courage when she 
took up contributions in the churches dressed as a 
Neo - Greek) she was always hampered by shyness. 
She certainly attracted all the best and most gifted 
of her time, and had a noble fearlessness in friend- 
ship, and a constancy which she showed by following 
Madame de Stael into exile, and in her devotion to 
Ballenche and Chateaubriand. She had the genius of 
friendship, a native sincerity, a certain reality of nat- 
ure — those fine qualities which so often accompany the 
shy that we almost, as we read biography and history, 
begin to think that shyness is but a veil for all the 
virtues. 

Perhaps to this shyness, or to this hidden sympathy, 
did Madame Recamier owe that power over all men 
which survived her wonderful beauty. The blind and 
poor old woman of the Ahbaye had not lost her charm ; 
the most eminent men and women of her day followed 
her there, and enjoyed her quiet (not very eloquent) 
conversation. She had a wholesome heart; it kept her 
from folly when she was young, from a too over-facile 
sensitiveness to which an impressionable, sympathetic 
temperament would have betrayed her. Her firm, 
sweet nature was not flurried by excitement ; she had 
a steadfastness in her social relations which has left 
behind an everlasting renown to her name. 



USE OF SOCIETY. 325 

And what arc. after all, these social relations which 
call for so much courage, and which can create so 
much suffering to most of us as we conquer for them 
our awkwardness and our shyness? Let us pause for 
a moment, and try to be just. Let us contemplate 
these social ethics, which call for so much that is, 
perhaps, artificial and troublesome and contradictory. 
Society, so long as it is the congregation of the good, 
the witty, the bright, the intelligent, and the gifted, 
is the thing most necessary to us all. TTe are apt to 
like it and its excitements almost too well, or to hate 
it, with its excesses and its mistakes, too bitterly. 
"We are rarely just to society. 

The rounded and harmonious and temperate under- 
standing and use of society is, however, the very end 
and aim of education. We are born to live with each 
other and not for ourselves ; if we are cheerful, our 
cheerfulness was given to us to make bright the lives 
of those about us; if we have genius, that is a sacred 
trust; if we have beauty, wit, joyousness, it was given 
us for the delectation of others, not for ourselves; if 
we are awkward and shy, we are bound to break the 
crust and to show that within us is beauty, cheerful- 
ness, and wit. "It is but the fool who loves excess/' 
The best human being should moderately like society. 



THE END. 



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Thirlby Hall...,.....,..,. Illustrated. 4to, Paper 25 

OLIPHANT'S (Mrs.) Agnes 50 

A Son of the Soil 50 

Athelings 50 

B r o w n 1 o w s 50 

Carita. Illustrated .., 50 

Chronicles of Carlingford....... 60 

Days of My Life 12mo 1 50 

For Love and Life 50 

Harry Joscelyn 4to, Paper 20 

He That Will Not when He May 4to, Paper 20 

Hester 4to, Paper 20 

* Innocent. Illustrated 50 

It was a Lover and His Lass 4to, Paper 20 

John: a Love Story..., 25 

Katie Stewart 20 

Lady Jane 4to, Paper 10 

Lucy Grofton 12mo 1 50 

Madonna Mary..., 50 

Miss Mar joribanks , 50 

Mrs. Arthur 40 

Ombra 50 

Phcebe, Junior 35 

Sir Tom 4to, Paper 20 

Squire Arden 50 

The Curate in Charge 20 

The Fugitives.... 4to, Paper 10 

The Greatest Heiress in England 4to, Paper 10 

The House on the Moor 12mo 1 55 

The Ladies Lindores lGmo, Cloth, $1 00; 4to, Paper 20 

The Laird of Norlaw 12mo 1 50 

The Last of the Mortimers 12mo 1 50 

The Minister's Wife 50 

The Perpetual Curate 50 

The Primrose Path , 50 

The Quiet Heart 20 

The Story of Valentine and his Brother 50 

The Wizard's Son 4to, Paper 25 

Within the Precincts 4to, Paper 15 

Young Musgrave 40 

PAYN'S (James) A Beggar on Horseback 35 

A Confidential Agent 4to, Paper 15 



Harper & Brothers' Popular Novels. 9 

1'EICE 

PAYX'S (James) A Grape from a Thorn 4 to, Paperf 

A Woman 1 s Vengeance 

At Her Mercy ; I 

Bred in the Bone 

By Proxy 35 

Carlvon's Year 

Cecil's Tryst 

For Cash Only 4 to, Paper 20 

Found Dead '.:> 

From Exile 4 to, Paper la 

Gwendoline's Harvest 25 

Halves 30 

High Spirits 4to, Paper 15 

Kit. Illustrated 4to, Paper 20 

Less Black than We're Painted 

Murphy's Master 

One of the Family 25 

The Best of Husbands 

The Canon's Ward Illustrated. 4to, Paper 25 

Thicker than Water 16mo, Cloth, $1 00 ; 4to, Paper 20 

Under One Roof...,. 4to, Paper la 

Walter's Word 

What He Cost Her 40 

Won — Xot Wooed 3 j 

RE ADE'S Novels: Household Edition. HPd 12mo, per vol. 1 w 

A Simpleton and the Wander- It is Never Too Late to Mend. 
ing Heir. Love me Little, Love me Long. 

A Terrible Temptation. g Woffington, Christie John- 

A Woman-Hater. stone, &e. 

Foul Play. Put Yourself in His Place. 

Griffith Gaunt. ; The Cloister and the Hearth. 

Hard Cash. White Lies. 

BE ADE'S (Charles) A Hero and a Martyr 15 

A Simpleton 

A Terrible Temptation, illustrated 

A Woman-Hater. Illustrated GO 

Foul Play 

Griffith Gaunt. Illustrated 40 

Hard Cash. Illustrated 

It is Xever Too Late to Mend 

Love Me Little, Love Me Long 

Multura in Paivo. Illustrated 1 1"> 

Peg Woffington, &c 

Put Yourself in His Place. Illustrated 

The Cloister and the Hearth 

The Jilt 

The Wandering Heir. Illustrated 

White Li 4<» 



10 Harper & Brothers' Popular Novels, 

PEIOE 

BICE & BESANT'S All Sorts and Conditions of Meii...4to, Paper$ 20 

By Celia's Arbor. Illustrated 8 vo, Paper 50 

Shepherds All and Maidens Fair 32mo, Paper 25 

" So they were Married !" Illustrated 4 to, Paper 20 

Sweet Nelly, My Heart's Delight 4to, Paper 10 

The Captains' Room 4to, Paper 10 

The Chaplain of the Fleet 4to. Paper 20 

The Golden Butterfly 40 

'Twas in Trafalgar's Bay 32mo, Paper 20 

When the Ship Conies Home 32mo, Paper 25 

EOBINSON'S (F. W.) A Bridge of Glass 30 

A Girl's Romance, and Other Stories 30 

As Long as She Lived 50 

Carry's Confession 50 

Christie's Faith 12mo 1 75., 

Coward Conscience 4to, Paper 15 

For Her Sake. Illustrated 60 

Her Face was Her Fortune 40 

Little Kate Kirby. Illustrated 50 

Mattie: a Stray. ..... 40 

No Man's Friend 50 

Othello the Second ... ...32mo, Paper 20 

Poor Humanity 50 

Poor Zeph! 32mo, Paper 20 

Romance on Four Wheels 15 

Second-Cousin Sarah. Illustrated.. 50 

Stern Necessity .-..., ; 40 

The Barmaid at Battleton 32mo, Paper 15 

The Black Speck ....4to, Paper 10 

The Hands of Justice 4to, Paper 20 

The Romance of a Back Street 32mo, Paper 15 

True to Herself 50 

RUSSELL'S ( W. Clarke) Auld Lang Syne 4to, Paper 10 

A Sailor's Sweetheart 4to, Paper 15 

A Sea Queen 16mo, Cloth, $1 00; 4to, Paper 20 

An Ocean Free Lance 4to, Paper 20 

Jack's Courtship ....4to, Paper 25 

Little Loo 4to, Paper 20 

My Watch Below 4to, Paper 20 

Round the Galley Fire 4to, Paper 15 

The " Lady Maud :" Schooner Yacht. Ill'd 4to, Paper 20 

Wreck of the "Grosvenor" 80 cents; 4to, Paper 15 

SHERWOOD'S (Mrs. John) A Transplanted Rose....l2mo, Cloth 1 00 

TABOR'S (Eliza) Eglantine 40 

Hope Meredith 85 

Jeanie's Quiet Life 30 

Little Miss Primrose 4to, Paper 15 

Meta's Faith 35 



Harper ct Brothers' Popular Novels. 11 



TABOR'S (Eliza) St. Olave's $ 40 

The Blue Ribbon 40 

The Last of Her Line 4to, Paper 15 

The Senior Songman 4to, Paper 20 

THACKERAY'S (Miss) Bluebeard's Keys 35 

Da Capo 32mo, Paper 2u 

Miscellaneous Works 90 

Miss Angel. Illustrated 50 

Miss Williamson's Divagations 4to, Paper 15 

Old Kensington. Illustrated CO 

Village on the Cliff. Illustrated 25 

THACKERAY'S (W. M.) Denis Duval. Illustrated 25 

Henry Esmond, and Lovel the Widower. 12 Illustrations.. GO 

Henry Esmond .' 50 cents; 4to, Paper 15 

Lovel the Widower 20 

Pendennis. 179 Illustrations 75 

The Adventures of Philip. 64 Illustrations GO 

The Great Hoggarty Diamond 20 

The Xewcomes. 162 Illustrations 90 

The Virginians. 150 Illustrations 90 

Vanity Fair. 32 Illustrations 

THACKERAY'S Works: Household Edition 12nio, per vol. 1 25 

Novels: Vanity Fair. — Pendennis. — The Newcoraes. — The 
Virginians. — Philip. — Esmond, and Lovel the Widower. 
6 vols. Ill'd. Miscellaneous: Barry Lyndon, Hoggarty 
Diamond, &c— Paris and Irish Sketch-Books, &c. — Book 
of Snobs, Sketches, <$:c. — Four Georges, English Humorists, 
Roundabout Papers, &c. — Catharine, &e. 5 vols. Ill'd. 

TPtOLLOPE'S (Anthony) An Eye for an Eye 4to, Paper 10 

Ayala's Angel 4 to, Paper 20 

Brown, Jones, and Robinson 85 

Can You Forgive Her ? Illustrated 

Castle Richmond 12mo 1 50 

Cousin Henry 4to, Paper 10 

Doctor Thome 12mo 1 50 

Doctor Wortle's School 4to, Paper 15 

Framley Parsonage 4to, Paper 15 

Harry Heathcote of Gangoil. Illustrated 20 

He Knew He was Right. Illustrated 80 

Is He Popenjoy ? 4to, Paper 20 

John Caldigate 4to, Paper 15 

Kept in the Dark ho, Paper 

Lady Anna 

Marion Fay. Illustrated 4to, Paper 2 I 

Miss Mackenzie 

Mr. Scarborough's Family 4 to, Paper 

Orley Farm. Illustrated 

Phincas Finn. Illustrated 



12 Harper & Brothers' Popular Novels. 

PRICK 

TROLLOPE'S (Anthony) Phineas Redux. Illustrated $ 75 

Rachel Ray . 35 

Ralph the Heir. Illustrated... 75 

Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite. Illustrated... 85 

The American Senator 50 

The Belton Estate 35 

The Bertrams 4to, Paper 15 

The Claverings. Illustrated 50 

• The Duke's Children 4to, Paper 20 

The Eustace Diamonds. Illustrated 80 

The Fixed Period ......4to, Paper 15 

The Golden Lion of Gran pere. Illustrated -. 40 

The Lady of Launay 32mo, Paper 20 

The Last Chronicle of Barset. Illustrated 90 

The Prime Minister 60 

The Small House at Aliington. Illustrated. 75 

The Three Clerks 12mo 1 50 

The Vicar of Bullhampton. Illustrated 80 

The Warden, and Barchester Towers. In one volume 60 

The Way We Live Now. Illustrated 90 

Thompson Hall. Illustrated 32mo, Paper 20 

Why Frau Frohman Raised her Prices, &c 4to, Paper 10 

WALLACE'S (Lew) Ben-Hur...... 16mo, Cloth 1 50 

WAVERLEY NOVELS: 

Thistle Edition : 48 Vols., Green Cloth, with 2000 
Illustrations, $1 00 per vol. ; Half Morocco, Gilt Tops, 
$1 50 per vol.; Halt' Morocco, Extra, $2 25 per vol. 

Holyrood Edition : 48 Vols., Brown Cloth, with 2000 
Illustrations, 75 cents per vol. ; Half Morocco, Gilt Tops, 
$1 50 per vol. ; Half Morocco, Extra, $2 25 per vol. 

Popular Edition : 24 Vols, (two vols, in one), Green 
Cloth, with 2000 Illustrations, $1 25 per vol. ; Half Moroc- 
co, $2 25 per vol. ; Half Morocco, Extra, $3 00 per vol. 
Waverley; Guy Mannering; The Antiquary ; Hob Roy; 
Old Mortality; The Heart of Mid-Lothian; A Legend of 
Montrose; The Bride of Lammermoor ; The Black Dwarf; 
Ivanhoe ; The Monastery ; The Abbot ; Kenilworth ; The 
Pirate ; The Fortunes of Nigel ; Peveril of the Peak ; 
Quentin Durward ; St. Ronan's Well ; Redgauntlet ; The 
Betrothed; The Talisman; Woodstock; Chronicles of the 
Canongate, The Highland Widow, &c. ; The Fair Maid of 
Perth; Anne of Geierstein ; Count Robert of Paris ; Cas- 
tle Dangerous ; The Surgeon's Daughter ; Glossary. 

WOOLSON'S (C. F.) Anne. Illustrated 16mo, Cloth 1 25 

For the Major. Illustrated 16mo, Cloth 1 00 



%W Haepek & Brothers ivill send any of the above works by mail, postage 
prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price. 



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